


Through Our Masks

by vienn_peridot



Series: Syngnath Chronicles [7]
Category: The Transformers (IDW Generation One), Transformers (Bay Movies), Transformers - All Media Types, Transformers Animated (2007)
Genre: AU: Syngnath, Alien Biology, Alien Culture, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Art by Pangolin, Art by Rainraye, BAMF Red Alert, Canon-Typical Violence, Chronic Illness, Depression, Developing Relationship, Eventual Romance, Falling In Love, Fluff, Forbidden Love, Friendship, Graphic description of mental illness, Happy Ending, Hurt/Comfort, Idiots in Love, Illustrations, Mutual Pining, Other, Romance, SpecOps as Family, Suicidal Thoughts, Syngnathi!Hound, Syngnathi!Jazz, Syngnathi!Ratchet, TFBB2019, caveat lector, cuddle piles
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-21
Updated: 2019-12-14
Packaged: 2020-09-23 13:21:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 17
Words: 43,241
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20340766
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vienn_peridot/pseuds/vienn_peridot
Summary: Hound is hiding deadly secrets, but it doesn’t stop him falling for one of the most dangerous mechs on Earth.Mirage finds himself developing feelings for the most unlikely of mechs.When Mirage sees Hound’s spending increasing amounts of time in Medbay he becomes determined to find out what is wrong with him before it’s too late.





	1. Introduction

**Author's Note:**

> This is my contribution to the TFBB2019, dedicated to my amazing Teina who has been going through some serious bullshit the last couple of years. You are one of the best people I have ever met and I'm so lucky to have met you.Kia kaha, kia maia, kia manawanui.
> 
> I was privileged to work with two amazing artists, the wonderful [Queen Raye](https://queen-raye.tumblr.com/) and [Pangolin](https://www.instagram.com/pangolinprime/) for this project and they have created some gorgeous illustrations for key moments of this fic. I will slide their polychromatic glory into the fic at the appropriate chapters, but if you go check out the eyecandy that is their work you might be lucky enough to see a sneaky preview ^.-
> 
> This fic will deal quite graphically with barely-managed suicidal depression and tangentially with a form of paranoid schizophrenia that is well managed. Read with care. Hound has a strong, supportive and trustworthy network of people who are determined to help him. No matter what your illness tells you, you deserve to live and be as happy as you can.

Mirage came online to a familiar medical boot sequence and his Boss hardlined into his systems.

This wasn’t unusual after going down as hard as he thought he had.

Leaning on the steadying presence of Jazz and trusting in the safety it meant, Mirage forced himself to relax. Repair notices started rolling through his HUD but he didn’t focus on them. Schooling himself to patience he allowed emotions to flare, wash over him and fade as fragmentary scraps of memory merged slowly to form a coherent set of recollections.

_Ship damaged, Nemesis locked on, Decepticons boarding!_

Bright and vivid, the moment caught Mirage and held him fast.

A full-frame twitch didn’t reach his limbs, Jazz hanging out behind all but the last of his firewalls and intercepting motion commands before they got anywhere. There was nothing holding the desperate Noble to the surface beneath him, nothing to ground his frame. Mirage felt like he was going to fly away at any moment. His palms itched, fingers screaming for the hilt of his vibro-dagger.

[Easy, Lemures.] Jazz said, firm words passed between their connected minds. [That is _not_ here ‘n now.]

The words steadied him as he relived a frantic close-quarters skirmish, Blaster’s shipwide warning and the terrifying wall of flaming debris that flashed towards him as someone rammed the Ark into the Decepticon flagship. Sensor-ghosts of blinding agony tried to flood his awareness but they were intercepted and deleted by the helpful presence subtly restraining him as it guided his return to full consciousness and the present.

_I was severely injured, repaired well, and now…_

[You’re in Medbay, on the Ark.] As was his Boss’ habit in situations like this, Jazz was following his surface thoughts. [Ratchet’s domain. Our part of the ship was destroyed.]

Ah. That explained the disturbing lack of restraints. It would upset the non-Ops mecha to see one of their compatriots strapped to a medberth, as well as reinforcing the idea that Jazz’s Agents were too dangerous to trust.

_Dangerous, yes. But we are trustworthy within our limits._

[I tried to talk Ratchet into giving one of the Iso rooms to us, but he wouldn’t budge.] Jazz caught his concerns easily, sharing his own with Mirage without hesitation. [We lost Lancet so there was nobody to translate into Medic-speak for me.]

Mirage had been peripherally aware of the loss during the frantic swirl of battle, but now he had time to appreciate the impact of that loss.

[I will help you with the rest, Sir.] He spoke with full, directed glyphs for the first time since awareness returned. [What aren’t you telling me?]

A single glyph asked how he wanted the information.

Never one to shy away from the truth, Mirage opted for a hard and fast info-dump.

It was brutal.


	2. One: Establishing a Foothold

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Autobots come to grips with the situation they find themselves in.  
Mirage wraps his mind around the business of having a friend.

During the weeks that followed that awakening Mirage had plenty of time to be glad that Lancet was the only member of Special Operations they had lost.

Losses to the other divisions aboard the ship had been much, much heavier.

Shock and mourning filled the corridors of the ruined Ark, the depressed Fields and hushed voices of the conscious inhabitants creating a thick miasma of suffering that made Mirage wish that Smokescreen was a higher priority on the revival list. They did have Sideswipe, of course. But the red warrior had other, more pressing duties at the moment and was only peripherally associated with Special Operations at the best of times.

As soon as they had gotten Bumblebee online and up to speed both the scout and Mirage been ordered out to explore the planet. This left their Boss and Ratchet to get Hound back on his pedes. The green mech’s sensor suite was absolutely invaluable in situations like this. It was more than worth the finicky business of retuning and acclimatising it to the surrounding environment every time Hound suffered an unexpected shutdown.

One of the highest priorities in their exploration was to locate any sign of the _Nemesis_. There was evidence that they had brought it down with them, but they had yet to determine if it had broken up in the atmosphere or made it to the surface mostly intact. Being the active scouts they were the first to discover and encounter the native lifeforms of the planet.

By this time Hound had returned to duty and it didn’t surprise anyone that Hound was the one who ultimately identified a species of strange, bipedal organics as the dominant sentience amongst the native lifeforms. Mirage was more than happy to let Bumblebee take the lead in interacting with this species; until his particular social skillset was required it would be better to remain aloof.

_One must maintain appearances, after all._

As the amount of contact they had with the humans increased it became clear that the other three SpecOps mecha were –as Jazz put it- ‘happy as pigs in mud’ on this new planet. It was a strange human idiom, one of the thousands Jazz had gleefully absorbed upon discovering the sheer variety even a single human language could yield. Bumblebee was plying diplomacy skills that hadn’t seen use in eons and Hound was taking the ‘in mud’ section of Jazz’s analogy to new extremes with every passing week. Especially after someone put him in touch with a group of local off-roading enthusiasts and animal watchers.

As for Mirage himself, he was quietly and desperately homesick. Exploration and discovery had never been his forte; he preferred the familiar and controllable. He longed for Cybertron, dreadfully worried about the world they had left behind. The sheer _mass_ of this planet’s biota and rich energy resources mocked his last memories of the dimmed, dying husk of their home planet. He ran into constant problems when trying to adapt his training to this new planet. It was _exceedingly_ difficult to conceal himself and sneak completely undetected through such a crowded and ever-changing organic biosphere.

By the time they made a formal alliance with a coalition of human nations Mirage was thoroughly fed up with the entire planet. Despite his upbringing and training he just _couldn’t_ force himself to feign appropriate excitement at being able to witness and participate in such a momentous First Contact with a new alien species.

If the Towers had still been standing, if his House had still existed then this failing of his would have been a source of great shame.

But there was only Mirage left to carry the burden of their Dynasty and he just _didn’t care_.

It was hard to keep his emotions to himself at times, especially in the tight quarters they were forced to live in at that point in time. Building an adequate base from the unholy combination of a ruined starship and an active volcano was a difficult and time-consuming process.

Every now and then stress and tight rations would weaken Mirage’s impressive self-control and his Field would subconsciously reach out in search of comfort. Naturally this would draw the anger of those nearest him, especially if it was someone who disliked Mirage simply because of the caste he’d come from.

_Everyone_ was struggling and wary of burdening their fellows –especially Mirage and his fellow Operatives. Back on Cybertron, in the hidden shadow-world of Special Operations, Mirage would have had access to the resources and support needed to get through this. They _all_ would have.

Here on Earth there was nothing.

And none of them wanted to be the reason a teammate broke and had to be put down.

The possibility haunted Mirage as he struggled to contain his longing for home, muddling along by himself as best he could. Only approaching Jazz or First Aid when he was in desperate need of support.

Then one day the truly unexpected happened.

Instead of having his morning ration alone as usual, Mirage had company. Hound brought his own ration over and sat beside his fellow Agent. He even managed to draw the blue mech into some pointless smalltalk about their patrol routes to cover the fact that he was gently bolstering Mirage’s Field with his own, supporting him and somehow drawing away some of the painful sense of being displaced that ate at him.

The green mech was so subtle that Mirage hadn’t even realised what he had done until he was halfway through his duty shift.

And Hound _kept doing it_.

Somehow, Hound could divine when Mirage was struggling and was able to find the strength to give him a little boost when he needed it most.

It wasn’t much, but it didn’t need to be.

A companionable Field, a quiet joke, a hand in the washracks when the grit of this planet inevitably clogged up the workings of a frame that just wasn’t designed to deal with it.

Beyond grateful for this unexpected kindness, Mirage worried about how to express his gratitude in a way that Hound would understand. _Especially_ as the weeks passed and this pattern of behaviour became a firmly one-sided routine.

While they had worked together fairly regularly in the past, this was the first time they had been in close contact for an extended period of time. He wasn’t as adept at reading Hound as he would like to be, but he could see that the mech was struggling just as much in his own way as Mirage was himself. He was _acutely_ aware that they came from vastly different social strata and much could –and would- get lost in the chasm of cultures this created.

After wasting an entire scheduled recharge cycle awake, chewing over his own thoughts and cursing the large communal barracks that wouldn’t let him pace, Mirage decided to follow Hound’s lead and return the same courtesies he was shown.

_If nothing else, it is a place to start._

This seemed to surprise his fellow Agent. If the way Hound froze when Mirage offered to help rinse out his suspension meant anything other than total shock then he’d walk into Kaon with his electrodisruptor off.

The tentative gratitude in Hound’s now comfortably familiar Field told Mirage he was on the right track.

Soon after it became clear that the Tracker-Scout was going to do someone damage if he had another Monitor shift, so Mirage cornered him and suggested a trade. He knew he’d done the right thing when Hound jumped at the offer. Mirage saw the mech returning late, scratched and limping with stones jammed into his gears but grinning fit to split his face and gushing about the small mammal family he’d swerved off the road to avoid. He knew he’d done the right then

Two days after that he joined Hound out in the rain to let the natural precipitation sluice dust from their sensors. Their Fields meshed effortlessly as water slid over their plating and Mirage knew he’d made a friend.

#### ~V~V~V~V~V~

Even with Prowl’s carefully planned schedule for bringing everyone back online the Autobots were _very_ squeezed for space.

Assigned quarters were announced publically, although Jazz gave his team a heads-up beforehand. Optimus read out the list of names and rooms while standing on a large slab of rock hauled into the single undamaged shuttlebay that was quickly becoming a common Recreation Room for the entire base.

Eager to be out of the common barracks, Mirage still couldn’t help but flinch when he heard the numbers.

Smokescreen sharing quarters with Sideswipe and Sunstreaker; Mirage with Hound and Bumblebee.

Six mechs split between two rooms.

Even though they would be far less cramped than the rest of the Autobot forces it still made Mirage’s spark spin slow and heavy with reluctance and dread before he drew in a deep draught of air and told himself to suck it up.

_Jazz is doing his best for us. It won’t be for long._

The rest of the Autobots shot them envious looks as they gravitated towards their new roommates, blissfully unaware that the six ‘lucky’ mecha were all tiptoeing (a local term Mirage liked the imagery of) around training, histories and reflexes so razor-fine that nobody but another of their clade could truly understand.

_Sunstreaker might as well be one of us, but his ethical coding is all wrong for the job._

Mirage had been hanging back towards the rear of the room, with Hound a few paces ahead of him. As soon as Optimus finished speaking the green mech moved back until he was within Field-sensing range, neutral but decidedly welcoming. Mirage spotted Bumblebee moving towards them as he cycled his vents and wondered what size their accommodations would end up being. Bumblebee was Minibot Class and Mirage himself was slender and lightly built, meeting the Standard Mid-Range classification despite his height. As for Hound, he was taller than Mirage and _very_ sturdily built.

_Oh dear._

As if by some silent signal all of the SpecOps mecha moved in a loose group towards the rooms assigned to them, chatting about nothing as they went. They split into their designated groups in the corridor outside the pair of doors, all six inhaling nearly simultaneously as Bumblebee and Sideswipe took the initiative and opened the doors.

When light from the corridor poured into the space beyond Mirage felt his spark sink.

Turning on the light to get a proper look didn’t make it any better.

For one mech of average size-class it would be comfortable.

Two would make it ‘cozy’.

For three, let alone three seasoned members of Special Operations who were used to individual quarters in their specialised and secure wing of Autobot bases, it was _beyond_ cramped.

_Primus save us._

Given that it was temporary and Jazz was working his hardest to get them as close to the top of the priority list as possible, it might _just_ be doable. They could make it through the next month or two without accidentally murdering eachother when reflexes got ahead of processors.

_Maybe_.

Putting all of those concerns aside, Mirage couldn’t conceive of any way that two smaller mechs and one large one could fit into a space clearly fitted with bunks intended for four mechs on the smaller side of mid-class. The _only_ benefit this dormitory had that it was at the end of a corridor. There would be very little foot traffic past their door to set off their post-mission nerves.

Not that it would make much difference in the long run. They harboured no illusions about their ability to keep from accidentally harming eachother, no matter how good their intentions. Putting three Agents in the same quarters was asking for trouble, roughly equivalent to storing several large, questionably stable self-governing shrapnel bombs in the same room next to a construction site.

It _was_ safer than putting any one of them in with non-Ops mecha, but only barely.

_Thank Primus this is only temporary._

As of right now Optimus Prime was the only one who had his own quarters, but this was tempered by Ironhide and Prowl taking turns recharging with him to act as bodyguards. Naturally, department heads and ranking Officers were next on the list for individual quarters.

_Jazz will probably be in the vents nearby, if he recharges at all._

Standing in the doorway of their assigned quarters with Hound and Bumblebee, Mirage tried to figure out how in the Pit they were supposed to make this arrangement work.

To his surprise, Hound was the one who came up with a solution.

“I’ll take the floor.” The large Tracker-Scout said, scanning the room with a thoughtful expression. “When you two’ve figured out if you want top or bottom we can remodel things.”

There was the unspoken knowledge that none of them would be comfortable in a standard setup that an enemy could anticipate with ease. No matter where in the room any of them recharged.

“Are you gonna be comfortable on the floor, Hound?” Bumblebee asked while Mirage was still trying to process his way through the shock of the normally reticent mech being so assertive. “If we’re messing with the furniture anyway we can always modify one of the bunks for you.”

“Nah, the reinforcing would take too long.” Hound said dismissively, entering their assigned room ahead of the two smaller mechs and testing the construction of the bunks with a knowledgeable hand. “This rebuild has a bit more mass-density than these look like they can handle.” He hesitated for a moment, Field rippling awkwardly before reluctantly explaining furthur. “Besides, um, I’ve never been able to recharge with empty air under me. _Ever_.”

Even though they were groundframes through and though, as they were a long-range scout and sniper by vocation both Mirage and Bumblebee would be comfortable with a berth surrounded by empty air so long as an ally had claimed the space below them. They shared an understanding and sympathetic glance as Hound’s armour rippled and flared in a strong subconscious reaction to his thoughts.

_Thank you, Primus; for all the flightframe influence in my lineage…_

After a long discussion both Mirage and Bumblebee both laid claim to upper bunks, with Hound concocting a pallet-like thing along the back wall, opposite the door. Converting the bottom bunks into seating with storage space beneath didn’t take much effort at all compared to what would have been needed to reinforce either of them to take a mech of Hound’s mass.

_I _know_ Teletraan’s rebuilds messed with some of us more than others, but that seems excessive…_

Hound seemed perfectly happy recharging on the floor. Then Bumblebee’s human friends found out about it put the Autobots in contact with a company who produced heavy-duty foam mats that could be used as berth padding. The one on Mirage’s berth wasn’t up to the standards of the Towers, but he honestly didn’t care. Centuries of war and his training by Jazz had thoroughly rewritten his priorities when it came to such things. Along the back wall, Hound’s pallet had been built up into something Bumblebee referred to as a ‘pillow fort’ that the Tracker-Scout would happily vanish into every recharge cycle.

It was rather ironic that after all the amount of effort they spent converting their shared quarters to something that all three could tolerate, none of them ended up spending any time there when they weren’t recharging.

At least, Mirage was certain of the recharge thing when it came to himself and Bumblebee.

By the end of their first week cohabitating the yellow minibot had reassigned wholly to Interspecies Relations. They couldn’t afford to waste their best Human Liaison on running patrols and scouting, so Mirage ended up pulling double duty, covering his own routes and picking up many of Bumblebee’s assignments.

All the extra work was a good thing, in Mirage’s opinion. If he was busy he didn’t have time to get lonely or homesick, and if he wore himself out then he could recharge until his next shift without too much time to mope.

So far as he could tell, Hound was doing much the same thing he was. While the moments of quiet companionship that he treasured did continue, he rarely saw the Tracker-Scout in their shared quarters.

Whenever their recharge times did happen to coincide they would talk quietly, with Hound emerging just far enough from his pile of bedding to project faint, wispy images of Cybertron’s starfields on the ceiling until unconsciousness claimed them both.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I used [my characterisation](https://archiveofourown.org/works/12789777/chapters/29187051) of the unused MTMTE comic character 'Lancet' from IDW Gen1... and fridged him right away. Brilliant.  
And the idea of Sunstreaker having better ethical coding than Sideswipe amuses the hell out of me.


	3. Two: Insomnia

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hound struggles to adapt to life on earth.  
Some problems are more easily dealt with than others.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Working title for this chapter was 'Can't sleep, clown will eat me' to be read in Bart Simpson's voice ^.^;

Hound couldn’t recharge.

He lay on his pallet, optics offline, listening to the sounds of his roommates frames as they rested.

He _couldn’t_ recharge.

It wasn’t _safe_.

The communal barracks had been hell and this was only marginally better. Special Operations were far more curious than the average soldier –it was in their nature and the job description. They were more likely to pay attention to odd things, especially when Hound’s defences inevitably weakened during recharge.

Sometimes he got lucky and he would find their room empty during his off-shift, but it never very often or for long. By the time he got comfortable and convinced his every-wary systems to cycle down he would only get a couple of minutes of recharge before pedesteps outside would wake him up with just enough time to settle his racing spark and control his EMF before Bumblebee or Mirage came in.

Even if his roommates could manage to relax enough to recharge in their shared room, Hound always stayed awake when one or both of the other Agents were there. He couldn’t help it. He would spend hours pretending to sleep, watching the chronometer on his HUD and waiting for enough time to pass so he could get up and leave without arousing suspicion.

It simply _wasn’t safe_ to recharge with Cybertronians around.

_Especially_ not Cybertronians who were as observant as his fellow Operatives.

There was no telling what the Autobot forces would do to him if they found out that he had been lying all along.

A single slip could have deadly consequences.

_I’d get more mercy from the Decepticons._

The irony was enough to make a cat laugh.

From Hound’s point of view, the worst part of it was that it wasn’t just himself at risk, not anymore. If his secret was discovered, the Autobots stranded on Earth would lose his holoprojection abilities. The Ark crew took it for granted that he would be there, that Hound was exactly who and what he seemed to be. He _needed_ to keep his true nature hidden and didn’t trust his Field not to give him away while he recharged.

So he couldn’t recharge.

Not where someone might discover that there was a Syngnath in their midst.

And Hound wasn’t the only one.

Every time he considered how many of their kind had made it this far he swore Primus _must_ be laughing at them.

Two others.

Two mechs it was safe to let his guard down with.

That made three Syngnath in a total crew of twenty-three.

They had no way of knowing what their true numbers had been in the pre-war population of Cybertron, but Jazz with all his own intelligence plus what he’d raided from archives in places that weren’t supposed to exist put his best guess at something at least three times lower than what the ratio was now, here on Earth.

_Two Incubators and Jazz… It’s Unicron who’s laughing now._

Pulling his Field in close to his frame, Hound shifted on his pallet. Pretending to be moving in his sleep until he lay on his side, curling himself around the hollow ache in his chest. His spark pulsed with longing, empty chamber and unfulfilled code tormenting him with what he _wanted_ and _couldn’t have_.

Being broody was nothing new to Hound. He had suffered from the same condition before leaving Cybertron on the Ark.

In the early days of the war it hadn’t been much of an issue. Special Operations had been a world all it’s own then, with more than enough shadows within it to share the load. Specialists had applied subtle and deadly skills as needed.

Then the Decepticons had plunged their civilisation into civil war and nothing had been the same again.

The workload of surviving agents increased to the point where Hound had been totally unable to visit his home despite the repeated recommendations of Ops Medical and Psych teams. There _had_ been several Ovaria stationed around the Iacon area while they were building the Ark, but Hound only really got along with one of them. With the constant scheduling and deployment clashes they’d suffered, Hound truly suspected the hand of Unicron acting in his life. The last time he’d been with an Ovaria had been nearly a thousand years before Optimus had ordered the Autobots to abandon Cybertron.

While Hound’s stasis-suspended consciousness hadn’t registered the passing of time in stasis, his frame _absolutely_ had. It had been seven and a half million years since he’d last been with an Ovaria; even longer than that since his last litter had grown and left the nest.

And his frame felt the burden of every single one.

It was _hell_.

At some point during their long stasis his core coding had switched from encouraging him to seek a mate to a far darker set of processes. Hound’s recharge was full of dreams now, liberally mixed with nightmares. His processor would tease him with everything he wanted and no longer had or torment him with all manner of horrors that could befall the tiny handful of Syngnath within the ranks of the Earth-based Autobots.

He didn’t _dare_ recharge with anyone within Field-sensing distance.

But despite the danger and even though he knew better, Hound just couldn’t help that he would subconsciously relax around certain mechs that weren’t Syngnathi.

Mirage, in particular.

A memory of Jazz’s biolights blinking brightly with amusement flickered through Hound’s drowsing processors and he grumbled.

_At least _Ratchet_ didn’t laugh when I told him about it…_

Mirage was Towers Nobility through and through.

Hound’s initial infatuation with the spy’s beauty and intelligence had faded over the centuries, slowly becoming respect and admiration as they’d worked alongside eachother. Their complimentary Sigma Abilities meant they had been assigned to the same teams regularly. Because of this Hound had learned to read the Noble’s expressions and tells far better than Mirage probably realised. His superior EM skills had given him an edge towards the beginning, but Hound hadn’t needed to rely on that for a long time now.

Smiling into the gloom of their bunkroom despite the persistent ache in his chest, Hound indulged in a silent chuckle.

_He still thinks he’s impossible for anyone to figure out. I wouldn’t want to ruin his week by bursting _that_ bubble._

Even if Mirage hadn’t already been one of the most gorgeous mechs Hound had ever laid eyes on, he’d inevitably started noticing the many things that would have made the Towers Noble a wonderful Ovaria. After their second or third mission together Hound’s processor had started teasing him with dreams of nesting with a caring mate, of Mirage broadcasting contentment and relaxing in well-fed safety as he Hosted for Hound and some shadowy Ovaria.

That was one particular dream he’d _never_ shared with Ratchet. Even though the other Incubator could probably guess by now, given everything else Hound had told him. It would still take extreme measures to get Hound to actually mention it to anyone else.

Sighing softly, Hound tried to empty his processors and relax again. If he couldn’t recharge, he could at least try to get some sort of rest.

After an hour he succeeded, drowsing half-aware until morning.

####  **~V~Several Months Later~V~**

“What brings you to my humble abode, now that you finally have a room of your own?” Ratchet asked, his Field buzzing with friendly teasing as Hound made himself comfortable on the couch.

Today Hound just wasn’t in the mood for their usual banter. They’d had a rough couple of months waiting for the building team to finish up the Officers’ Quarters and start on Special Operations. Hound still wasn’t able to recharge without medical aids or the presence of his own kind.

_Or Mirage, which _should_ sound weirder than it does…_

“_Mostly_ I enjoy your company, but you know damn well this isn’t a social call.” Hound snapped, anger prickling through his Field.

The anger was followed by a thick burst of guilt and apology that Ratchet accepted without hesitation, blanketing the green Incubator with a soothing wave of understanding. He forced a mug of something that tantalised Hound’s chemoreceptors with the richness of geothermal energon and subtle seasoning. They didn’t _need_ mugs and things for drinking their energon when cubes were cleaner and more efficient, but Ratchet was old-fashioned and preferred to serve his visitors from physical containers whenever resources allowed it.

“You’re _still_ not recharging properly. I can tell that from your Field.” Ratchet observed, falling fully into diagnostic mode as he picked up his own mug and flopped into a chair, watching Hound’s every twitch. “It takes **us** more time to settle into a new place, and I can’t do anything about that.” Sipping his energon, Ratchet continued to study him with sharp optics. How’s the redirection going?”

Attempting to placate his egg-hungry code by observing young Earth creatures had been Jazz’s idea. Hound made a face at Ratchet over the rim of his mug.

“Mixed results.” It was the best way to sum up what had happened so far. “Using individuals of a prey species wasn’t a good way to start.”

Ratchet winced, clearly remembering the ragged mess of confused coding Hound had become for a couple of days after the Hawk Incident.

“Observing a family unit has been working better, but nothing fools it for long.” Letting his optics slide offline, Hound bowed his helm over his mug and inhaled slowly. Drawing the steam-laden air over sensitive chemoreceptors, he focused on the incoming data and trying to ignore the ache in his chest.

Eternally perceptive, the other Incubator stayed silent while Hound centered himself.

“It’s just too damn smart.” He said after a while, engine grumbling. “I hope the humans start trusting us enough to allow interaction with their family units soon. The closer the species is to sapience the better this should go.”

Sighing, Hound made a concerted effort to change the mood before he ended up pulling Ratchet into the depressive spiral his unhappy code had triggered. Moods like this tended to be contagious.

“In the meantime I _could_ get a dog and help Bumblebee with all those Interspecies Relations missions he keeps bitching about.” Forcing a grin was a little difficult, but his Field conveyed the teasing well enough without it. “You know, those ones to the youngling education facilities.”

“_Schools_. You mean _schools_ and we are absolutely _not_ getting you a dog.” Ratchet said firmly, bringing a true smile to Hound’s face. “Red Alert and Prowl would _both_ have fits.” After a long, pensive silence, Ratchet added; “It’s a shame, really. A longer-lived creature would do you no end of good. Prime loves the Police canines as much as he loves Dad Jokes so you know he’d be all over the idea in an instant.”

For a single wistful moment, Hound allowed himself to imagine sharing custody over a herd of retired police dogs with Optimus before regretfully shelving the idea.

“The problem would be convincing Prowl _and_ Red Alert.” He sighed again, folding the arm that wasn’t holding a cube over his chestplates in a futile attempt to brace himself against the endless nagging of his empty gestation/maturation chamber. “If by some miracle I managed that, it’d be listening to you bitching about _more_ shed keratin strands clogging up everyones’ atmospheric filters.”

“Don’t start on _that_ or you’ll be recharging on the floor.” Ratchet growled, vocaliser shifting to add menacing subharmonics to the sound.

It was an empty threat, but Hound was too tired to think of a snappy comeback. He settled for sticking his glossa out like a bratty youngling to make the medic rumble with amusement. They sipped their cubes in companionable silence, listening for Jazz’s arrival.

It had been a hard week for all three of them so Ratchet had prescribed a good, old-fashioned recharge pile. This would alleviate some of the stress they were all operating under and Hound wouldn’t have to worry about his Field betraying giving him away to Mirage while he slept. The trio of Autobot Syngnath were slowly forging Clan-ties between themselves but it would take more time than they’d had available lately.

_At least I’ll get a solid defrag in tonight._

This was small comfort, given Hound’s situation.

It was better than none.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A wild New POV Character appears! Writing Ratchet was a good break from the Pining Idiots.
> 
> Syngnath sleep best in a pile.
> 
> I also need Hound and Thundercracker starting a dog rescue/fostering/retirement center for service doggos.


	4. Three: A Room of Your Own

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Autobots work to convert the wreckage of the Ark and the dormant volcano into a usable base.  
Individual quarters, no matter how rudimentary, have a massive positive effect on the sanity of Special Operations.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Me: *happily writing along*  
Mirage: *orbital bodyslam of backstory and character development*  
Me: *lying at bottom of smoking crater feeling like a confused duckling* Ow... Um... ok??

Every time Mirage woke from a deep, uninterrupted recharge in the secure privacy of his own quarters, he silently thanked Primus that he worked directly for Jazz.

As soon enough of the Ark had been cleared out and shored up to make personnel quarters feasible, Jazz had put his Agents on the priority list for individual accomodation after the Command team. Prowl had agreed with the priority, ranking them alongside Medical. When their quarters were finished, Ops were all tucked away in a secure corner far from the constant comings and goings of the rest of the crew.

It wasn’t elaborate by any stretch of the imagination; everyone that wasn’t a part of the Command Team got a small, unfinished room to recharge in. This room was separated from the main corridor of the residential wing by another, more ‘public’ room that wasn’t much larger than the berthroom space. Washracks were communal; there was one for every two ‘wings’ and everyone not attached to medical avoided the one nearest the Med bay unless they had no other choice.

Cramped rooms and lack of private bathing facilities didn’t really bother any of the Autobots, despite the inevitable grumbling. By this point they’d all experienced much worse over the course of the long war and the complaints were more out of habit than anything else. All any of them really cared about was having a private, secure space to retreat to.

_Especially_ Special Operations.

It was extremely important to keep the rest of the Autobots safe from twitchy Agents who were _desperately_ in need of a place in which to safely decompress.

That was exactly how Jazz had sold it to the rest of the crew when accusations of favouritism arose.

For the mechs of Autobot Special Operations and Intelligence, simply _existing_ on a day-to-day basis without being able to drop the various façades they used in order to be accepted by the rest of the Autobots was _incredibly_ stressful. It didn’t matter that for most of their ‘Autobot Personae’ was as close to their base personality as possible; it was still an exhausting act to maintain. Having a place where it was safe to simply exist, to drop their acts and be themselves was absolutely vital to their continued functionality.

And now they finally had it, the difference was clear.

Even cheerful, easy-going _Bumblebee_ was noticeably more relaxed.

That more than anything else was probably what had made the loudest complainers mute themselves and move on to other topics.

While Jazz himself had gotten private quarters at the same time as the other officers, his laughter had held a distinctly manic edge until his Agents were safely quartered. It was five large worries removed from his list of immediate concerns so that he could focus more on the enemy than making sure his mechs didn’t lash out at an unsuspecting soldier.

_He has been under a great deal of stress since we woke…_

As for Mirage himself, he definitely calmer than before and was far more comfortable walking the corridors of their slowly developing base without engaging his electro-disruptor and vanishing from sight. He didn’t think outside of Ops had noticed a difference, though. With his background he was very much an outcast amongst the crew. Choosing to actively avoid the only other Autobot-aligned Noble on Earth meant he had gotten a reputation as a snob and a loner.

Even though Tracks was well-known for being an insufferable prat.

_It would take _significant_ bribes to make me actively socialise with that mech, thank you!_

Strangely, of all the Ops team it was the imperturbable _Hound_ who had been most bothered by the lack of private quarters.

Mirage had been standing near the Tracker-Scout when Jazz had announced that their rooms were ready. To his surprise Hound had actually started _shaking_, his biolighting flaring in irregular patterns across his frame. A brief, uncontrolled eruption of Hound’s Field had carried a sense of _relief_ so overwhelming it was amazing that the mech hadn’t broken down and cried. Mirage had been so grateful that he’d wanted to kiss Jazz, but had restrained himself at the last moment.

With his more spontaneous personality and persona Bumblebee had actually done so, making a spectacle of himself and amusing everyone present. Watching Hound from the corner of his optic feed, Mirage had seen the green mech cycle several shuddering ventilations and slip his mask firmly back into place.

That meeting had been over a month ago.

So far the only mechs Hound had invited into his quarters were Jazz and Ratchet. From what Mirage could tell, the Tracker-Scout himself only visited Ratchet. He had been a little too obvious in his curiosity, drawing the notice of both Bumblebee and Sideswipe who teased him mercilessly about having a crush on Hound.

_I’m _not_ stuck on him; it is natural to be curious about ones’ colleagues. Especially in such a small community… _

Mirage knew what Bumblebee’s main room looked like because some of that teasing had taken place in the minibot’s own quarters. He had caught enough glimpses of Bumblebee’s berthroom through the open door to know the walls were plastered with optic-burning pop-art and concert posters. Both of them had seen the inside of Jazz’s quarters more often than they’d like, especially before Ops had been shifted out of the communal barracks.

Curiosity ate at Mirage as he wondered just why the friendly, easy-going Hound guarded his privacy so jealously.

_Is he breeding exotic rodents or something?_

It was within the realms of possibility, after all. Mirage certainly wouldn’t put it past the mech. Hound was notorious in the Autobots for his fascination with alien lifeforms and he was already developing a reputation amongst their human allies as having an obsession with the non-sentient lifeforms of their planet.

Like all of the Autobots, Hound had gone on a shopping trip with his first free day, purchasing supplies for decorating and the likes. At least, Mirage _assumed_ he’d purchased decorating materials. Nobody had actually _seen_ what Hound bought apart from the bird bath and bird feeder he’d set up in a clearing near the Ark. Everything else that had been in the large crate he’d brought back with him had vanished into his quarters and not been seen by anyone except Hound himself, Jazz and Ratchet. There was no getting information out of Jazz, and Mirage didn’t want to hand Ratchet gossip fodder ‘on a silver platter’ as the humans said. Mirage could live with unsatisfied curiosity if it meant keeping Ratchet and the rest of the Medical and Science teams from endless theorising about possible reasons for his interest.

_Oh well, at least Hound seems to be recharging more._

None of them had been able to recharge much while barracked together near the rest of the army; however Hound seemed to have suffered the most of all of them. Ratchet had even sedated the tracker-scout several times, but only when he could be monitored by the CMO or Jazz in a secure isolation unit in Medbay.

Regular recharge hadn’t smoothed the green Scout’s attitude towards him all that much. Mirage pondered this as he accessed Teletraan-1 and reviewed his duty schedule for the next fortnight. He genuinely enjoyed the other mech’s company and Hound could be a good conversationalist when one managed to draw him out of his shell. At times it was easy; Hound would be friendly and willing to discuss whatever subject Mirage brought up. Other times it was nearly impossible, Hound withdrawing into a deep silence that held Mirage at a distance hidden beneath a thin veneer that looked almost like his normal self. Hound could swing from one to the other with almost no warning and Mirage had yet to figure out what he was doing that caused the other Agent to reject him.

So far Hound was one of very few mechs on Earth that didn’t scorn him for his origins or shame him for his longing for home. Mirage enjoyed the mech’s company far more than he thought he would when they first met, genuinely looking forward to his company on missions or patrols. He hadn’t begun _actively_ seeking the green scout’s company in his off-time, but he didn’t pass up a single opportunity to spend time with Hound when one presented itself.

If those opportunities were happening more and more often, well, that was just coincidence.

_I like him. I’m glad I become his friend._

The thought startled Mirage. When the Towers had fallen he’d thought he would never want close ties with another mech again. He had closed himself off, sinking into the world of Special Operations and responding to the hostility of the Autobot soldiers with complete and utter indifference.

_Attachments lead to pain. I do not need their approval._

It was what had made him so good at his job, so effective a spy and assassin. Bumblebee had tried to convince him that not all emotional connections were bad, that they were necessary for a healthy functioning.

_“Even the Twins are less fucked-up than you when it comes to this.” Bumblebee said frankly, sitting on his bunk staring Mirage down with gaze of pure steel. “You don’t rely on anyone except your handler and even then you don’t let them in further than necessary. You’re going to go insane like this and then we’ll have to put you down. Don’t do that to Jazz.”_

Mirage had respected –even admired- Bumblebee’s ruthlessness even as he swore at the yellow minibot in terms that made his core coding squirm uncomfortably.

Bumblebee hadn’t been bothered in the slightest.

_He _was_ my superior officer at the time…_

Bringing up Jazz had worked, and Mirage had spent the next several centuries working towards developing acquaintances with some of the mechs around them. Although that conversation had taken place millions of years ago, the vast majority of that time had been spent in stasis.

_Teletraan’s rebuild must have had something to do with it. Or is it watching the humans?_

Being around individuals that still knew what it was like to live without a constant state of war had been a revelation to many of the Autobots. Mirage still wasn’t sure what he thought about the species as a whole, but he thoroughly enjoyed having access to such a wide variety of culture, music and art again.

_It must be those memoirs I have been reading…_

For all that their backgrounds were so different and Hound exasperated him with his lack of manners and utter indifference towards the concept of proper personal grooming, Mirage wanted to deepen his relationship with the mech. So far Hound had been unfailingly patient when it came to the differences in their backgrounds –something Mirage couldn’t claim to have been, himself.

According to Teletraan-1 Mirage had a little over week before he was next scheduled to patrol with Hound. Until then it was monitor duty and surveying some of the more difficult-to-reach sections of the cavern complex they’d discovered next to the buried prow of the crashed Ark.

_Ugh, I _loathe_ spelunking._

With a sigh, Mirage slid off his berth and began preparing for the duty shift ahead.

#### ~V~V~V~

A solid week of torrential rain had washed out a burrow of rabbits Hound had been watching. Anticipating an upset and withdrawn mech after hearing of this, Mirage was surprised to be greeted by a smiling Hound before the start of their assigned patrol.

As usual, Mirage couldn’t help scrutinising his fellow Agent’s appearance as the green mech approached. Today Hound looked scruffy, even for him. When he caught Mirage’s reaction to his scuffed, dusty plating and liberal splattering of dried mud his grin was almost enough to distract the Noble from his offended sensibilities. When he came within range his Field spun a lazy dance of relaxed mischief against Mirage’s sensors.

“Ready to go?” Hound asked, likely guessing at the comments about his appearance already burning in Mirage’s vocaliser.

Nobody seemed to understand that he wanted his friends to look their best because they _deserved_ to look good. Clean and cared for. In the Towers a mech’s finish showed the degree to which those closest to someone cared about them. Mirage couldn’t help how he was raised and coded, and seeing Hound wandering around looking like nobody loved him was discomfiting on a very deep level.

“I _was_.” Mirage said acerbically, pushing the suddenly uncomfortable train of thought aside and deleting it. “But now I’m reconsidering. Let us leave before I give in to my baser urges and throw you in the river.”

“_You’re_ in a good mood today.” Hound observed as he transformed smoothly, wiggling his wheels in the dust. “No threats of hosing me down or scrubbing me with a floor brush.”

“It’s because I no longer have to listen to you two twitching and snoring all night.” The playful subglyphs would once have been too subtle for Hound to catch.

_Towers-type teasing, I believe Jazz called it._

To Mirage’s delight, this time his meaning was understood and the banter returned with definite warmth.

“I’m _definitely_ having an easier time of it without all the glare off your plating.” Hound flapped his side-mirrors mockingly, his Field light and almost playful. “I’m sure the automotive suppliers are enjoying your patronage.”

“Between Sunstreaker, Tracks and myself I’m sure we can try to keep them in business.” Mirage hummed with amusement. “Until we win the war and have the time free to show them how to formulate a _true_ Cybertronian polish.”

“Dear Primus I hope it happens soon, to spare the rest of us who have to listen to you lot complaining!” Hound’s Field rippled with mirth.

Huffing with feigned annoyance, Mirage did his best to avoid potholes and settled in for what looked to be an extremely enjoyable patrol.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Aaaaand here we have the point where Mirage suddenly sprouted a backstory for this AU out of nowhere and unleashed an army of plotbunnies relating to a prequel about his life in the Towers and how he ended up joining Special Operations.
> 
> And nobody would be surprised if Hound was breeding fancy rats in his room. Once he discovers landmine-sniffing rats he'd probably be all over it. (There are Landmine and TB sniffing rats, they are awesome and you can adopt one and get updates about how they're going and it's fuckin brilliant)
> 
> I've always been fascinated by the fanon that Tracks and Mirage don't get along very well, mainly because one of Tracks' main character traits is being an absolute tosspot. So I'm playing with Towers culture


	5. Four: The Balancing Act

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hound's health and sanity are a fragile construction that rely on many delicate legs.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Starting here, Red Alert just sprouted this habit of inserting himself into the fic without warning TTuTT No regrets.

Hound rearranged his quarters regularly, almost obsessively.

At least once a week without fail he would shuffle everything in his two tiny rooms around in an attempt to make the place feel more homelike, more secure, more comfortable or welcoming or defensible.

More _something_, more of whatever he felt was important at that point in time.

It didn’t escape his notice that all his worst redecorating binges happened whenever Mirage stopped him for a chat in the corridor outside their quarters. Given that all of SpecOps were quartered in the same little out-of-the-way corridor, Mirage was able to strike up those conversations on a _very_ regular basis. Not that Hound minded, a lot of the time. He genuinely enjoyed talking to Mirage. It was what his instincts made of the situation that annoyed him.

_Redecorating_.

It was a deceptively harmless euphemism for _nesting behaviour_.

A dangerous symptom of something he shouldn’t be feeling for such a dangerous mech.

_He’s purely Cybertronian, he’s Towers Nobility. It’s _impossible_. He’d kill me as soon as he knew. Primus, _please_ don’t do this to me…_

It didn’t matter what his better judgement wanted.

Hound freely admitted that he both liked and admired Mirage. Even without the pressure of his instinctual coding he was in serious danger of falling for the stunning, breathtakingly competent Noble.

But he still wanted to spend more time with Mirage.

Bantering on patrol wasn’t really enough. He missed their rambling conversations in the shared bunkroom, missed the quiet sounds of the spy in recharge, wanted to invite Mirage into his quarters so badly he had to offline his vocaliser every time they spoke in the corridor right outside his door. Hound had put a lot of effort into making his berthroom the epitome of comfort that could be produced with local resources and wanted to show it to someone that he knew would truly appreciate it.

All of the soft furnishings he’d bought so far were in warm colours; rich shades of earth and sunshine that made Jazz give him pitying looks when his boss thought he wasn’t looking.

Red and yellow ochre, raw sienna, yellow gold, gamboge hue, cadmium pale yellow, umber, _burnt_ sienna.

Sunstreaker named the different shades for him when they shopped together –once Hound had convinced him to walk his holoform away a massive display of colour samples to actually go get what were there for.

Tough fabrics, thick foam padding, a huge (by human standards) awl and miles upon miles of sturdy thread to construct cushions and padded blankets went into his pushcart and then into subspace. It had to fight for space with the overflow from Sunstreakers’ purchases that wouldn’t fit into the frontliner’s subspace on that trip.

That had just been the first of many trips to craft and hardware stores, so now Hound’s nest looked like an explosion of every kind of yellow and orange flower Earth had ever produced. It was a bit of an odd colour choice given that he was constantly surrounded by the dull burnt orange of the ruined Ark’s and the dark, almost-black igneous rock of the volcano they were expanding into. He was probably the only Autobot that hadn’t gone for the total opposite of unrelenting orange and black. There was no real reason for it, except that every time he used his holoform to wander the aisles of a store he found himself gravitating towards colours that complemented both his own unexciting forest green and a certain shade of rich pthalo blue.

Sunstreaker was his most frequent shopping buddy and the golden frontliner wasn’t in the habit of asking questions when he could tell they wouldn’t be welcome. He just gave his opinion colour whenever Hound asked for input and loaded their trolley with cans of paint for decorating his and Sideswipe’s quarters. Hound had no idea what the frag ‘Neutral Tint’ was supposed to be, but with his standing invitation to join the Twins for video games in their quarters he knew he’d find out eventually.

Despite their propensity for extreme violence on the battlefield, the Twins had a lot of visitors.

_Probably has something to do with the gaming system they’re working on. And they don’t care about foul language slipping into the banter… _

As the crew slowly trickled out from the communal barracks and into shared or individual quarters it had become customary for mechs to use the main room of your quarters as a relatively private social space. Officers and SpecOps were a different story, although Bumblebee had established ‘Visiting Hours’ and maintained an active social life. It saddened Hound that Mirage didn’t seem to have any friends outside his fellow Agents. For a while he had assumed that the mech would gravitate towards Tracks because they were the only Towers Noblity in the crew. The opposite had happened, with Mirage shunning the triplechanger for some obscure reason he wouldn’t talk about.

When it came to Hound’s social life he was far more like Mirage than the rest of the crew realised.

There were only two mechs he was comfortable with letting into his quarters –his abnormally tiny new clan; Ratchet and Jazz. Even so much as _thinking_ about asking anyone else in, even just for a _second_, would send him into a defensive tizzy. It was how he’d always been, and thankfully the rest of the Autobots didn’t question why he never invited anyone to socialise casually in his own quarters. According to Bumblebee everyone assumed it was ‘an Ops thing’ and left it at that.

_I think we scared them a bit when Jazz sicced us on the ‘Cons that one time…_

Given that half of Hound’s main room looked like the results of a high-speed meeting between a botany museum and The Tailor of Gloucester’s workshop, Hound figured it was all to the better. If anyone other than Ratchet and Jazz discovered his hobby he would be inundated with more requests for bespoke blankets and cushions than he could handle in a lifetime.

_At least I can trust them and the Twins not to blab about who made theirs._

The other half of the space was _much_ tidier. It consisted of a standard living room setup, with a couch and single wall-mounted tv -as opposed to the multiple screens of the Twins’ gaming setup or Jazz’s truly monstrous sound system. Hound mainly used his setup to watch every documentary series and soap opera Earth had ever produced.

Background noise while he sewed, white noise while he tried to recharge.

They didn’t have the kind of soundproofing and filters on the living quarters that would give his modified sensor suite a true rest yet, so Hound did what he could with what he had. It was something he’d almost gotten used to over the millions of years of war.

One series had just finished and Hound was trying to decide which to play next when Prowl pinged him about a change to his schedule.

Checking it, Hound groaned when he saw an evaluation and overnight stay in Medical had been inserted for later that week.

_Meddling bastards, why can’t they just leave me alone?_

#### ~V~V~V~

After using his CMO overrides to enter Hound into the system, Ratchet started planning a temporary nest in the most secure isolation room the Autobots currently possessed.

One that was only used for Decepticon prisoners or the Autobots’ own Special Operations Agents.

All of this would have been much easier to do if the Ark had still been intact, but after so long at war they had all become masters of making do. Disabling the security cameras before he got started was a simple process, now that they had a protocol established.

::Chief Medical Officer Ratchet to Head of Security, Red Alert; confirming Unit Three for Ops Containment.::

The keypad outside the isolation unit door was triply defended against tampering. Inputting the relevant commands and his authorisation into the system in a blur of precise keystrokes, Ratchet waited for the confirmation over comms.

::Affirmative.:: Red Alert responded, all business. ::Confirming Ops Containment protocols for Unit Three. Go ahead, Ratchet.::

Sighing with relief, Ratchet entered the room and locked optics on each camera in turn. The sequence was one he’d arranged with Red Alert at the beginning of the shift. One of the cameras whirred, zooming in and out.

::Preparing to manually disengage the cameras.:: Ratchet sent.

::Confirmed for manual disengagement.::

This part of the protocols had almost caused the entire security team to have a thermonuclear meltdown when it was first instated. Between them Jazz and ratchet had prepared a counterargument for every possible objection. It was an unprecedented situation. Normally if a SpecOps unit was going to be this far out they’d have their own backups and support systems in place to ensure the safety and functioning of the Agents and those around them. They were operating in uncharted territory on all fronts and The Autobots simply _couldn’t afford_ the damage an Agent could do if one snapped and went rogue.

The rest of the procedure went smoothly, Red Alert breaking out of his Work Mode just long enough to wish Ratchet luck with the treatment before signing off.

By now he had no problem getting extra padding and tarps into the room without raising suspicion. At first he had panicked about being caught at it, until Bluestreak accidentally provided him with the perfect excuse. Now if anyone asked he just shrugged and said, “It’s Ops; I don’t ask questions, I just do it.”

_Anything_ that helped to keep Jazz’s team stable and functional was quietly understood to be Very Important by the entire Ark crew. Living in such close quarters with the general run of the Army as they did now gave everyone stranded on Earth a much greater appreciation for what lay hidden behind the public personas.

_Especially_ after Jazz gave the command to unleash them all in battle during the early days here. It had been going badly for the Autobots up until that point. Then Jazz had broadcast a single phrase and the Decepticons had abandoned the fight within a matter of minutes.

_Don’t think anyone here’d seen that sort of calculatedly vicious carnage before…_

Hound’s use of his holograms to divide and confuse the enemy with intangible obstacles and illusory clones of opponents had been the talk of the base because of how utterly ruthless he had been. It had been so unlike the pleasant mask he wore on a day-to-day basis nobody had expected that level of deliberate mayhem from him.

Ratchet knew what had been behind this, knew what still bothered Hound and led to recharge cycles devoid of rest. Between themselves he and Jazz worked hard to keep Hound sane, to give him the best quality of life they could manage under the circumstances. As often as Jazz cursed Shocjwave for his interventions in his fate, neither of them could deny the unexpected weapon he’d handed the Autobots when he set his sights on Jazz.

_Fucking Shockwave… would we even be where we are if it wasn’t for him?_

#### ~V~V~V~

The process was always the same.

Specific sedatives to dull Hound’s innate wariness and soothe Ops-trained defences, followed by precisely twelve Earth hours of medically-induced, dreamless recharge.

They did this once every two weeks. Today, after seeing the strain and degradation of Hound’s systems under the impact of severe broodiness Ratchet wanted to make it weekly.

“I think we’ve got something else to try beside putting you in Medical Stasis.” Ratchet’s Field was full of caution, needlessly warning Hound not to get his hopes up. “Jazz has put together some code patches, using my Medical Protocols as a template.”

Hound couldn’t get his processor to formulate the questions he wanted to ask. He was far too groggy from the sedatives, more than happy to lie there and let Ratchet groom his shoulder mount with gentle claws. Humming a generally questioning note, he let confusion fill his Field and tried his best to focus on the Medic’s words instead of just basking in the presence that soothed anxious subroutines.

“There are several Clan lines that produce medical-oriented mechanisms with blunted or absent Egg-Hunger. It is something to do with the Medical Code itself inhibiting motivational clashes that would render a Medic unable to care for one’s patients.” Ratchet spoke slowly and clearly so Hound could follow him. “Anyway; I happen to be from one of those Clans. Which is why Jazz is using my Core Code as a template for the patches rather than his.”

“Smart.” Hound’s glossa didn’t want to obey him. “’Specially after Shockwave.”

Ratchet’s EMF went as flat and hard as his voice.

“Yes.”

Shockwave had been declared Anathema long before he mutilated their comrade. Anyone who knew what he’d done would draw the kill out instead of simply putting the rogue Syngnath down.

“Gonna kill him, one day.” Hound said, smiling dreamily at the edge of the makeshift nest as he pictured it. “Give Jazz his spark casing.”

“Not if I get to him first.” Ratchet growled, armour flaring in an angry display.

“Hmm, race you?” Hound asked, his Field sleepily playful as he adjusted his position in Ratchet’s lap. “Loser has to pick between Helm and T-Cog.”

“Deal.” Ratchet said firmly as the timer on his HUD reached zero, indicating that the sedatives should have worked their way through Hound’s systems. “You ready for me to put you under now?”

“Mmm, okay.” Hound slurred. “Stay until I fall asleep?”

“I’ll only leave when Jazz gets here.” Ratchet promised.

Slurred thanks crackled into static and the click of vocaliser shutdown as the programs took effect and dropped the green Incubator into sleep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Incubators generally have a hard time killing, but when it comes to defending their own all bets are fucking OFF. Shockwave is fucked. RIP in fucking pieces.
> 
> Due to my own experiences with mental/psychiatric illness I handle Red Alert a bit differently to what is accepted practice in both Canon and Fanon. I chose to interpret Red Alert's paranoid delusions as a symptom of some type of paranoid schizophrenia, compounded by an anxiety disorder, and in this AU his conditions are being successfully treated and weaponised to the advantage of the Autobots. It takes a lot of work to achieve functionality with any sort of mental or psychiatric illness and the fact that Red Alert in G1 made it to head of security shows what a complete and utter badass he is and can be.  
TL;DR: I'm fucking sick of him being made the butt of bad jokes so I won't write him like this unless it's very dark humour (the type we use to cope). Losing your grip on reality is fucking terrifying.


	6. Five: A Little Bird Said

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Mirage makes some worrying discoveries, then gets sidetracked by emotional concerns.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I was trying to make a a clever play on the saying 'a little bird told me' or 'birds of a feather' but I'm too fuckin tired to engage in intelligent smartassery right now :facedesk:
> 
> Also chapters in this are gonna start to get LONG from here and I AM TOO TIRED TO CARE, WHEEEEEEE. ENJOY!!!!

The duty rosters had been changed _again_.

A routine scouting foray that _should_ have been Hound’s was now assigned to Bumblebee instead, the signatures of Prowl, Jazz and Ratchet confirming and authorising the change.

These changes were happening frequently now.

The roster published to Teletraan’s intranet was two weeks in advance and usually revised several times due to Decepticon encounters and non-routine training accidents or laboratory explosions. When they’d first woken on this planet Hound and Bumblebee’s scouting shifts would be switched once every couple of months. Then it had become every other month. It had turned into a normal monthly occurrence so long ago that Mirage had only just now realised it had become a weekly thing.

_When did _that_ happen?_

Research into archived timetables wasn’t reassuring at all. In fact, it ended up being the opposite when Mirage discovered a pattern of escalation that worried him greatly.

Extremely concerned, Mirage shut down his personal terminal and went looking for the Tracker-Scout.

It wouldn’t take him long to find Hound. By now Mirage had all of Hound’s favourite places committed to memory, as well as a workable prediction model of which ones he frequented under which conditions.

_And when did that happen, I wonder? Ha, if the House Primarch were still alive to hear about this he’d throw a fit._

While looking for his friend, Mirage indulged in a little spiteful envisioning of the former Primarch of his House and Tower throwing a very juvenile temper tantrum. It helped take his mind off his worry as he hunted; working through the list his prediction model gave for the weather and time of day.

_Slag the controlling glitch. He’s dead and I can be friends with whomever I please._

As the humans said, it was third time lucky.

Mirage found the green mech in one of the clearings near the Ark crash site. Hound was kneeling on the ground beneath a tree that seemed to be home to half the birds in the area. He was relieved to see that the healthy sheen the larger Tracker-Scouts larger armour had acquired after his last Medical stay seemed to be holding. In the light of the systems’ star he shone with a healthy vibrancy that Mirage privately wanted to run his fingers over and polish to bring out the hidden undertones he was sure were there.

Allowing himself a brief indulgence in imagination as he swept his optics across the planes of Hound’s armour and pictured the mech polished to a subtle shine, Mirage found himself smiling without inhibition. Anxiety rose and was quickly squashed by relief at the knowledge that they were alone -and that nobody from his House and Tower were still alive to care, anyway.

With these thoughts distracting him, Mirage was halfway across the field before he noticed Hound’s posture. The dejected set of that lovely green armour, the way his frame drooped as if something stronger than the local gravity was pulling him towards the ground and he just couldn’t fight it.

_What?_

Then the grief hit him.

Hound was surrounded by an electromagnetic wall of pain so strong that Mirage had to pause briefly and regain his own equilibrium before continuing forwards.

Moving slowly now, Mirage approached until he stood at a precisely calculated point behind and to the side of the Tracker-Scout. While he knew that Towers protocol meant nothing to Hound, it still did to him. If anyone watching was familiar with the world of the Nobility, where Mirage had chosen to stand was as subtle as Devastator’s pede to the face.

“Hound?” Mirage kept his voice low and his Field neutral so as not to startle the other Agent.

It didn’t seem to matter, Hound didn’t even twitch. In fact, he didn’t even acknowledge Mirage’s presence for so long that the Noble was about to comm Ratchet when the green mech finally spoke.

“They… don’t always make it.”

The glyphs were so quiet Mirage had to boost his audial gain, filtering out background noise to be sure of what he heard.

It was obvious that Hound was referring to the tiny body of the fledgling bird cradled in his hands, but there were subtleties to his subglyphs that spoke of a broader meaning.

Something _extremely_ important was barely hinted at.

There weren’t enough clues for Mirage to even begin to grasp the shape of this secret. He knew it would drive him wild with curiosity until he uncovered it, whatever it was.

Hound continued speaking as if nothing had happened, either not noticing or not caring about his subglyphs and the brief flare of turmoil Mirage knew had leaked into his Field before he controlled it again.

“It was learning to fly.” The green mech stroked the side of his thumb over the bird’s tiny body with impossible delicacy, smoothing soft down back into place. “It misjudged a landing and broke a wing; must have died of shock afterwards. One little mistake can cost _so_ _much_.”

Again, the subglyphs didn’t quite match up to the conversation they were ostensibly having. It was almost as if Hound was subconsciously hinting at something he wouldn’t –or couldn’t- bring himself to say outright.

_Is it from before the war? We have all lost so much…_

“I’m sorry.” Mirage felt a little silly speaking the ritual glyphs of Mourning Recognised for a tiny, nonsentient organic, but Hound’s grief was too real and it deserved acknowledgement. “What should we do for it?”

Hound’s helm whipped around and he gave Mirage a piercing look that settled into a guarded stare from cool blue optics.

“What do you mean?” He asked, suspicion edging his glyphs and lacing through his Field, sharp and cold.

“You cared for this creature, now it has passed to whatever version of the Allspark awaits organics after they extinguish.” Mirage said simply, opening his Field and allowing Hound to probe for the truth of his words if he chose to. “And so you grieve. That this life touched yours and is now gone is something that deserves acknowledgement, does it not?”

For a long, long moment Hound knelt there and stared up at him, hands slowly easing close to cradle the body of the young bird closer to his chestplates. He searched Mirage slowly and thoroughly for any sign of falsehood. Patiently, Mirage endured an EM probing that felt more like an interrogation than a simple quest for the truth. He withheld or filtered none of his reactions. The touch of Hound’s Field was focused, adept and strangely pleasant despite the unquestionably bizarre situation.

He felt the precise moment when Hound decided to believe him. Something gave way in the green mech’s Field, his stoicism crumbling in that instant to leave him open and vulnerable as mourned.

Without hesitation, Mirage knelt in the grass and dirt of an alien world to give his friend a shoulder to lean on, silently offering whatever comfort he could.

Gratitude flickered against him as the offer was accepted.

And then… then the floodgates opened.

The sheer _depth_ of the grief in Hound’s Field surprised him. While the surface was raw and ragged, there was a deeper note acting as bedrock to the current storm. Mirage, with all the skill of his upbringing and further training, could tell this as easily as cycling his ventilation systems.

All of Mirage’s earlier concerns and reasons for seeking Hound out had long since vanished from his processors. Clearly the death of this fledgling bird had tapped into some deep emotional hurt that Hound had yet to finish processing.

_Something_ in the past had wounded his friend deeply, something that he still dealt with on a daily basis. When he realised this, Mirage felt his spark contract with a sharp sensation that wasn’t quite pain.

_Oh, Hound. I wish…_

“I’ll… bury it here. Beneath the tree.” Hound’s voice was thick with static that masked all subglyphs, stripping all but the most basic of meanings from his speech. “I s-should leave it for scavengers; that would be natural. But… I _can’t_…”

A half-stifled clicking sob nearly tore Mirage’s spark to shreds. As it was, he ached so badly he felt as if the crystal chamber protecting it must surely be cracking.

“If I understand the nature of organic ecosystems correctly, the materials from it’s fra-_body_ will be consumed by smaller organisms in the soil, broken down into component materials and eventually processed as nutrients by this tree.” Mirage said, gesturing up at the branches spreading above them.

As he spoke the Noble silently cursed the mannerisms of his upbringing that meant less than nothing to the mech beside him. He wanted to offer consolation, but wasn’t sure how to do so in a way that would come across as meaningful. He felt the situation far too important to simply wing it and hope for the best, but it was all he _could_ do.

“The bird will still be part of the cycle of this planet,” Attempting to bolster Hound’s shattered emotional state with his Field, Mirage risked placing a hand on a green-plated forearm. “You will have the comfort of knowing both where it lies and what has become of its construction materials.”

From his Field and the pale-opticed, decidedly astonished look Hound gave him, the larger mech clearly hadn’t thought of any of that.

“_Mirage_.” Hound breathed his name like a Priest of Primus giving sacrament. It did funny things to Mirage’s insides as Hound continued. “You’re _amazing_.”

Deliberately ignoring the uncontrollable flush spreading from his cheekplates to his helm vents from the complement, Mirage shifted to sit beside his fellow Agent. As he did so, he felt the velvety softness of Hound’s Field open fully to his, filling him with a dangerous tenderness.

Then Hound gave him the tiny, half-feathered thing to hold and it took all the skill he’d ever learned to act as if his spark wasn’t turning brittle as the tracker-scout began to dig a small burial pit.

Together they conducted a makeshift funerary rite for the tiny, nameless organic flightform; Mirage reciting the liturgy alone when Hound’s voice crackled and popped into silence during the opening words.

When it was done they sat together in silence, Fields intertwined until Sol set and more distant stars filled the sky.

### ~V~V~V~

The Decepticons were being weird.

Even weirder than what was now their norm on this strange organic backwater.

With his latest mission brief open in front of him, Mirage was staring at the unenviable task of trying to find out _why_.

_Apparently Jazz thinks I can work miracles._

Engine rumbling with displeasure, Mirage read the mission brief for a third time.

It didn’t change.

An entire _month_ spent skulking the halls and conduits of the sunken _Nemesis_, dodging Soundwave and his cassettes. With the extra fun of pilfering energon from Decepticon supplies if he had to engage his mod too often and burned through his rations too early.

_Listening to Ratchet complain about the state of my filters afterwards is almost as bad as drinking the stuff in the first place._

When they’d first located the wrecked Decepticon warship the purely Cybertronian architecture of the _Nemesis_ had been almost homelike; worsening Mirage’s acute homesickness each time he infiltrated the sunken ship. Now it was a damp, corroding mess that looked worse than the images of a darkened, energy-starved Cybertron trickling through Wheeljack’s experimental deep space communications array.

_It certainly reflects the current state of Megatron’s psyche, if nothing else._

There really was no other alternative; Jazz and Bumblebee were desperately needed to deal with the humans and Hound didn’t have the skills necessary for the mission. Heaving a sigh, Mirage was preparing to accept the mission when something made him hesitate.

Kneeling before the console in his private quarters, fingers hovering over the keypad of his truncated Teletraan-1 terminal, Mirage paused. Stilling himself, he let the strange impulse call up what memory files it would in hopes of finding some sort of explanation for his uncharacteristic reluctance.

_Chatting with Hound in the Ops Residential Corridor / A large, silent green presence materialising beside Mirage when he was stargazing atop the summit of ‘Autobot Volcano’ and missing home / Collecting his ration in the rec room, Beachcomber and Hound discussing the local flora and fauna loudly at a nearby table/ Hound’s smile / The endless stream of encouragement from Hound during a rainy, mud-mired patrol / Burying the bird, the grief in Hound’s Field and the way he leaned against Mirage for nearly an hour afterwards as the sun started to go down._

_Hound_…

Having witnessed the depths of Hound’s grief for the dead fledgling, Mirage was extremely unhappy about this assignment. There had been something about the Tracker-Scout’s glyphs that set off warning bells in Mirage’s processor when he combined it with Hound’s recent behaviour. He was now very, very worried about mech he thought of as one of his closest friends.

And one did not just _abandon_ their friends when they were suffering like this.

_More than a friend..._

The thought floated through his processor but was easily ignored in the face of more immediate concerns.

It didn’t matter that none of the Autobots –Hound included- would see it as abandonment when Orders were involved. It still _felt_ like one to him.

If Hound was as unwell as Mirage feared he might be then the Noble couldn’t afford to waste a single moment.

Time was limited and tomorrow was never guaranteed, after all.

Not in their line of work.

Making a decision almost without realising it, Mirage slid one of his personal-use dataslugs from subspace and plugged it into a wrist port. He left it with Jazz the next morning, his superior under strict instructions to pass it along to Hound when his friend was released from Medbay.

_I hope it helps…_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I REALLY DIDN'T WANT TO MAKE HOUND THAT SAD THIS EARLY BUT IT WAS NECESSARY FOR PLOT. But his coding isn't being rational and I needed something juicy to wave at Mirage's curiosity.


	7. Six: The Team Works, But Can The Dream?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Code patches give Hound a new lease on life.
> 
> [Illustrated Chapter]

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> GUESS WHAT GUESS WHAT GUESS WHAT  
THIS IS THE FIRST CHAPTER WITH ART LKSFJHGKLFDJGHKAJH  
The brilliant [QueenRaye](https://queen-raye.tumblr.com/post/187241734582) illustrated a scene from this chapter and I will be including it at the relevant point. Click the link to their tumblr for spoilers ^.^

Individually, Jazz and Ratchet were geniuses.

Before the war they had been amongst the frontrunners of their fields.

Now? They were _peerless_.

And when they worked together, _miracles_ happened.

The code patches they created were a product of sheer, unbridled _brilliance_. Being based on Ratchet’s own core code framework they worked better at taming the disruptive sections of Hound’s core programming than anything else they’d tried to date.

It _was_ only a temporary solution, like everything else. Eventually they knew Hound’s innate antiviral software would break the patches down. Even now his core systems were working against the abnormal influence, trying to set everything to rights.

Despite this knowledge Hound woke after the first successful patch install feeling so good he actually worried that he’d lost his mind -until Ratchet smacked the back of his helm and gave him the rough side of his glossa with so much affection in his Field most would wonder if the CMO was the one who’d gone bonkers.

Then, embarrassingly, Hound broken down and cried all over the Incubator-Medic out of sheer relief.

Two days after that momentous morning Jazz put Hound through the standard Evaluation Interview.

Jazz cleared him as fit for duty in what was probably record time. It was definitely the fastest Hound had been back on the Ops roster while on Earth –and probably for a few centuries before the crash as well. No boring monitor duty, no dull inner-perimeter watches, no numbing patrols of well-guarded and familiar territory. He was right back ‘on the horse’ as one of the Nest techs put it.

_I’d like to meet a horse one of these days._

Hound was feeling better than he had in centuries and it _showed_. It turned out to be annoyingly obvious to everyone around him. The amount of friendly teasing he received in the common room/mess hall increased drastically, the soldiers_ and civilians _of their human allies more willing to interact with him. What was best in Hound’s mind was that Jazz ‘happened to pass by’ much, much less often while Hound was at his observation points, checking on local wildlife.

_He scares the birds. Hmm, speaking of Jazz…_

There was a dataslug currently burning a metaphorical hole in one of Hound’s subspace pockets. Jazz had given it to him after the Evaluation Interview. At the time he’d claimed to just be a ‘delivery boy’, that the one who had asked him to pass it along was _Mirage_.

Naturally, Hound’s first reaction was to suspect a trick.

Mirage had _never_ done anything like this before and he couldn’t think of any reasons for the Noble to start doing do now. While Hound might classify Mirage as a friend in the privacy of his processors (and he knew that most of the crew thought of them as such) he still couldn’t figure out if Mirage wanted to pursue anything more than the friendly camaraderie they had established.

_Friends, but not _close_ friends. I think?_

It was nice but Hound wanted more.

Although he knew damn well that he shouldn’t.

The dataslug in mocked him when he pulled it from subspace to contemplate it, the connection jack unfolding in response to the pressure of his thumb. Ready to go. Hound eyed it for a moment, then decided not to get his hopes up.

Anyone that Jazz had ever trained knew full well how much the Polyhexian loved to keep them on their toepieces. His little ‘training’ tricks and pranks were legend within the ranks of SpecOps. Therefore _nothing_ given outside of an official work capacity could be taken at face value.

_Jazz is probably just messing with me_.

Settling comfortably in his nest, Hound keyed up his strongest firewalls and antiviral defences. Everything was up to date and in full working order. Feeling prepared, he slid the dataslug into a wrist port and waited for his programs to determine the safety and origin of the device.

_It… it’s really from Mirage!_

Spark flaring bright and hot, Hound rushed to access whatever was on the slug.

A neat list of files appeared on his HUD, Mirage’s hand clear in the choice of word-glyphs used in the names.

There were several short documentary series from Earth that he hadn’t seen yet, copies of some pre-war treatises about a particularly famous example of Cybertron’s deep-planet cave ecosystems, rather blurry photos of what looked like a pair of brown toupees on a pedestal.

It took Hound about ten minutes to figure out that he was supposed to be seeing the birdbath installed in the formal garden outside the of the Ark. The toupee-things could have been birds or small mammals. He had no way of telling without asking Mirage himself.

And finally, there was a letter.

Indulging in an utterly frivolous use of his holographic abilities, Hound rolled to his back and projected the glyphs of Mirage’s message across the smooth, quartz-veined basalt ceiling of his berthroom.

Staring at the elegant shapes in their full, formal glory the Incubator couldn’t deny what he was looking at.

_Those _modifiers_. That’s concern, and fondness, and…_

Warmth bubbled up in Hound’s spark, overflowing to fill his frame with tingling, shivery light.

Mirage wrote to him in the way that Towers Nobility wrote to their closest friends. He’d intercepted and decoded enough messages before the Towers fell to know exactly what he was looking at. Even though he was alone and there was absolutely nobody around to see him Hound still covered his face with his hands to hide the grin that threatened to split his face in half. Feeling a bit silly and too happy for the moment to really care, he read and re-read the glyphs from between his fingers. Cycling his vents, Hound pressed his palms to the dermal metal of his cheeks in an attempt to ground himself as some bright, shivery feeling spread through him.

Fortunately for his dignity, a note of caution intruded on the shivery feeling before he could make any embarrassing noises.

Like the vast majority of Cybertronians, Mirage would likely have no problem with executing Hound or turning him over to the rest of the crew for mob justice if the Noble found out what he was.

_I know I’m in far too deep already, but I still have to be careful…_

One wrong step and everything the Decepticons had ever done to him would look merciful by comparison.

#### ~V~V~V~

As always, returning to find the Ark base was still in one piece after spending a month away was a _very_ pleasant surprise.

Finding Hound looking better than he had since Teletraan-1 rebuilt the surviving Ark crew was ‘the icing on the cake’.

Mirage got a glimpse of the green mech on his way to Ratchet for mandatory medical examination. His post-mission cooldown period seemed to take twice as long as normal. A greater than usual level of impatience was to blame for the perceived time dilation, although neither Jazz nor Ratchet commented on it.

The dataslug from Hound containing memoirs and autobiographies of nature-minded humans hadn’t helped pass the time as much as he’d hoped. The lively text-based conversation they kept up did nothing but make him long for the immediacy of a live discussion where he could watch the expressions move over Hound’s expressive face and feel the enthusiasm in his Field.

The _instant_ Jazz decided Mirage was safe enough to reintegrate with the crew, Mirage went in search of his friend.

It took all of fifteen minutes for him to find Hound without the aid of Teletraan-1’s automatic tracking systems.

_That has to be a new record, I think._

As he suspected, the green mech was sunbathing atop an exposed portion of the Ark’s hull. Nearby Perceptor and Fireflight were sprawled out, blissfully asleep and Steeljaw was flopped as flat as he could possibly make himself, tail twitching as he held an unencrypted comms argument with some of his cassette brethren. With it being a beautiful sunny day Mirage had expected to see more mechs taking advantage of the broad expanse of sunwarmed, Cybertron-forged metal.

Sunbathing was an extremely popular pastime for the Autobots. Sol’s radiation provided them with a tiny energy boost, which was still appreciated even though the geothermal generators were up and running smoothly. The heat of the star itself was downright lovely after centuries of war rations giving even the most energy-efficient frametypes an acquired dislike of the cold.

Out of deference to the sleepers, Mirage pinged Hound on shortrange comms. It was the radiowave equivalent of the friendly wave he received in return when Hound pushed himself up onto his elbows to return the greeting. The smile on the Tracker-Scout’s face brought an answering one to Mirage’s lips as he approached the reclining mech.

Without the subtle lines of stress and exhaustion Mirage had become used to seeing Hound looked centuries younger –closer to his actual age than that of, say, Ironhide. Mirage committed Hound’s relaxed, happy smile to memory, getting lost in the soft glow of light blue optics as he settled himself comfortably next to his friend.

The first brush of their Fields jolted him back to awareness of his frame.

A warm wave of _Welcome/comfortable/pleased-to-see-you_ brushed against Mirage, accompanied by the unique resonance that was Hound. Returning the silent greeting, he let the outer layer of his EMF blend with the scout’s and hid his embarrassment by pretending to look for a ‘clean enough’ patch of hull to recline on. In reality he was checking his footing on an overly smooth surface created by the heat of hull-breaching weaponsfire and atmospheric re-entry.

_We should install some of the humans’ non-slip mats up here._

“It’s good to see you, Mirage.” Hound spoke first, voice low enough not to wake the sleeping mechs.

There wasn’t anything short of encrypted comms that would keep Steeljaw from overhearing, but he and his clade were attached to Ops as well it didn’t matter to Mirage what the cassette did or didn’t hear. In fact, Mirage hoped he wasn’t the only one hearing the way Hound said his designation-glyph with those modifiers of gentle affection.

“So what brings you out to mingle with us common sun-worshippers?” The light, teasing tone of Hound’s voice was a balm to nervecircuits Mirage hadn’t even known were frayed.

Playing along, he hummed thoughtfully as he found an ‘acceptable’ place next to the green mech and lowered himself gracefully. Once seated, he indulged in a luxurious stretch as if he wasn’t hyperaware of Hound watching him. It was easier to shut off his own optics instead of find somewhere to look that wasn’t at Hound, so Mirage did just that as he laid back on the sunwarmed Cybertron-born metal of the Ark. Any sounds from Hound’s direction were temporarily disregarded as his sensors registered Sol’s generous heat bathing his armour, prompting a sigh of purest bliss.

“Oh, I’ve missed this.” Mirage breathed, speaking only half to himself.

A rather strangled-sounding agreement from Hound made him smile.

“To answer your previous question,” Mirage said, opening his optics and shooting Hound a teasing smirk. “Ratchet has ordered me to discover if Cybertronians can sunburn.” This was completely truthful, although Ratchet had used somewhat different words. His smirk deepened as he nudged the Tracker-Scout’s Field playfully. “And _I_ decided that the only improvement the scenery here needed was my presence. The rest of the place is beyond help, unfortunately.”

Hound laughed at his deliberately snooty tone, but Mirage was watching and saw the moment when his fellow Agent figured out the complement hidden in his words. A barely-suppressed thrill shivered through Hound’s Field, then he was in full control again. Regretfully, Mirage knew he would surprise no further reactions like that out of the mech again that afternoon.

_You only get one round at a time past those ramparts…_

It was enough, for now.

Filled with contentment, Mirage let himself relax for the first time in long weeks as he basked in the sun and the contact with Hound’s Field.

#### ~V~V~V~

Like all good things, it couldn’t last.

For a while Hound had himself half-convinced that they’d found a permanent solution to his core-code problems and this wonderful new phase of his life would go on forever.

_Or until the war ends, and then it would get even better._

Of course that wouldn’t be the case.

Not in the same universe that had allowed Megatron and the entirety of Decepticon High Command to survive stasis with them.

_At least we can talk to Cybertron now; and the time delay is getting shorter…_

Slowly, inevitably, Hound’s operating software and antivirals broke down the patch that Ratchet and Jazz had applied to his coding. Grafted subroutines decayed, eroding beneath the effects of unconscious internal maintenance and the defragmentation effects of deep recharge. In any other circumstances –normal ones- this would have been good. Hound’s most basic functioning processes were working as designed to keep errors and conflicts to a minimum, keeping him alive, sane and functional.

Removing patches and edits flagged as hostile or foreign data was what they were supposed to do.

Dutifully he reported the rate of degradation to Ratchet and wasn’t surprised to learn that the CMO already had another patch cooked up and ready to go.

It became a cycle, repeating every three or four Earth months.

The patch currently installed would slowly lose efficacy, Ratchet would put Hound under and together with Jazz carefully strip out the alterations and install a new variant before the green Incubator’s antivirals could finish breaking down the foreign code and potentially learn how to neutralise it altogether

The whole process would have been infinitely easier if they had access to a specialist. A mnemosurgeon or a code specialist would have been able to go in and graft the new operational strands seamlessly into Hound’s very mind.

_It’ll be a miracle if we ever manage to find someone._

In the meantime, the patches smoothed his interactions with their human allies so that Hound was finally comfortable enough to socialise with some in his off-hours. It was much, _much_ easier to be around the tiny, fragile bipeds without a large chunk of behavioural subroutines screaming at him to pick them and dote on them like hatchlings.

_They’re grown adults, for Primus’ sake! Soldiers!_

As time passed in chunks of code patches his friendship with Mirage continued to deepen very satisfyingly in both professional and personal settings.

They had become the go-to pair for recon in unexpected places, their complementary abilities so well-suited to Earth that Jazz joked they’d been made for the place. The humans of NEST raved to new recruits about their skills, and proving the truth of those claims to the newbies had become an important part of weeding out those who wouldn’t be a good long-term fit in the multi-species unit.

Spending so much time with the Noble on missions and around the Ark made the contrast between Mirage On A Mission and Mirage During Downtime even more marked to Hound than it had been before. In fact, it was so vivid that he just didn’t understand how nobody else could see it too.

The contrast _fascinated_ him.

When Mirage was working he became a creature of laser-focused professionalism and utter competence, moving with the deadly grace of a born predator that made Hound’s struts and tensor cables feel like they’d been replaced with rubber. Around the base he was what Jazz had called ‘Noble-casual’-somewhat aloof but still willing to converse politely with almost anyone who approached him. He moved with the same fluid, dignified grace as Prowl or Optimus but was much, much quieter. His razor-sharp wit and sly sense of humour startled most humans who encountered it.

Right now there was heavy wagering on how long it would take Mirage to ‘break’ their current (and particularly unlikable) attaché to one of the major human governments. Hound was sure of his bet; already planning what to spend his winnings on despite the odds Smokescreen had given him.

_Half can go toward Mirage’s next Debut Anniversary gift._

As the months turned into years it became glaringly obvious to him that Mirage was incredibly lonely. Slowly, Hound discovered that the Noble was a very social mech behind his public persona. In the Towers he’d been widely recognised for his party planning abilities.

_I never once had a mix of guests that didn’t get along well… unless I planned it that way._

Mirage had given him a wicked grin, golden optics had sparkled with mischief as Hound demanded to know what had happened. The story he got of one particular party satisfied every gossipy corner of Hound’s spark and had him laughing so hard his entire ventilation system stalled.

Unfortunately for Mirage, his public persona on Earth didn’t allow him to socialise with the same kind of ease that Hound and Bumblebee could. With that in mind, Hound deliberately capitalised on his reputation as being approachable and a little eccentric to ‘drag’ an ‘unwilling’ Mirage along to any social events he thought the mech might like.

Keenly aware that Ratchet thought each code patch was lasting just a little less than the one before, Hound was determined to do whatever he could for his friend.

While he could still do it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Mirage is a shit organic-nature photographer. Hound really truly hasn't met a horse yet.
> 
> JFC SOMEONE NEEDS TO SET THESE TWO UP ON A BLIND DATE BEFORE BLASTER AND HIS CREW CLEAN UP IN THE BETTING


	8. Seven: Chatting, Dancing, Breaking Down.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Time passes, relationships progress.  
Hound's physiology continues to work against him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sooooo this one is like patting a nice fluffy happy dog that has a cactus for a butt.  
I'm sorry.

Predictably, Mirage’s successful mission earned retaliation in kind from the Decepticons. This came in the form of Soundwave sending his beastformer cassettes to find holes in the Ark’s security network several times a week.

Skywarp was probably involved as well, but they couldn’t track the teleporter well enough to be sure.

If Buzzsaw, Laserbeak or Ravage weren’t intercepted on their way in they would leave evidence of their presence –primarily by shredding as many of the new non-slip mats at the sunbathing area as they could manage while staying undetected.

_Petty little slaggers._

It was a nuisance for the Autobots to have to clean up every few weeks or so, stashing the crates of shredded stuff in a half-destroyed storeroom while Wheeljack worked on a way to recycle the material back into more mats.

Today it was Mirage’s turn to pick up the mess. Prowl had created a thoroughly unglamorous set of ‘groundskeeper’ duty shifts in order to keep the area around the Ark looking presentable. Unfortunately, tidying up after destructive Cassetticons was one of the Ark Groundskeeper’s multitude of mundane jobs.

Some deeply-coded part of Mirage still found this kind menial work humiliating, but he had more sense than to protest after Prowl’s speech to the crew.

Unlike Tracks.

That had been a truly _delicious_ dressing-down to witness. Mirage had shamelessly recorded every second, and asked both Red Alert and Rewind for copies of what they’d caught.

_‘We are _soldiers_, not cogboars. You will _not_ give the humans any reason to doubt this. Or would you prefer to recharge in a sty? I’m sure Hoist will be happy to build one on to the brig.’_

With all this casual vandalism taking place right on top of the Ark itself, security was on high alert. Jazz had every single one of his team running extra sweeps inside the perimeter, in addition to an official increase in the number of normal patrols and guards.

Red Alert was convinced the Cassetticons were somehow making it into the Ark itself on every trip. The common theory was that most of the destruction was pure psychological warfare, born out of envy of their hypothetical leisure time and ready access to an energy source that could be converted into usable Energon.

From gossip he overheard on the Nemesis and personal experience, Mirage knew that the truth was a combination of both. He’d been responsible for thwarting half a dozen infiltration attempts so far and was planning some petty revenge of his own for the next time he had to venture into the _Nemesis_.

Bumblebee had some surprisingly good ideas -behind his cheerful act the minibot could be positively _sociopathic_ when he wanted to be.

Sometimes Mirage thought he himself had finally been openly acknowledged as 2IC only because Jazz needed a token to keep everyone from thinking that Ops consisted entirely of laid-back reprobates or crazy minibots.

Why_ did he have to make Smokescreen and Sideswipe officially ours?! They’re giving me so many headaches!_

Grumbling internally at Cassetticons, Superior Officers and the Universe In General, Mirage finished stuffing the last pieces of shredded mat into his garbage bag and headed back inside the Ark. After dropping it off in the correct storeroom he got replacements and started hauling them up to the sunbathing area –a task his frame wasn’t exactly designed for.

The only upside to Mirage’s day so far was that the weather was fine and clear, with no rain forecast. He wouldn’t be running the risk of slipping on slick, wet metal while hauling the awkward bundles. This part of Earth didn’t have acid rain, so bad weather wasn’t allowed as an excuse to shirk this particular duty.

Even without precipitation Mirage was still up to his elbows and knees in mud by the end of his shift, with irritating bits of vegetation crushed into his seams.

_A decorative organic garden, they said. It will be good for morale and recreation, they said. Slagging idiots never counted on _weeds_. _

There were twigs, leaves and other _stuff_ jammed into seams and worked deep into gaps of his dorsal plating –a common problem when one was built for flexibility and speed. An experimental twist of his frame told Mirage that there was absolutely no way he could get it out himself. Even with the useful adaptation of some human grooming supplies he simply wouldn’t be able to reach it all.

_Stupid organic matter. Why couldn’t Command have chosen a nice, easy rock garden?_

There were very few mechs Mirage felt safe enough around to let them at his unprotected back. A quick ping of Teleraan-1 told him that two were currently available; with Jazz in a secure meeting and Bumblebee out of the country it left Mirage to choose between Hound and Ratchet, as both showed an off-shift.

It was, as the humans said, a ‘no-brainer’.

Opening his comms, Mirage ignored the effervescent warmth settling in his tank as he pinged his friend.

::Hound, are you awake?::

Given how little the Tracker-Scout had actually slept while they had been in their shared room, Hound’s insomnia had become something of a standing joke between them.

::Yeah, I’m conscious.:: Hound’s modifiers were of fond amusement and familiar frustration at the difficulty of achieving recharge. ::What’s up?::

::I have half of the garden trying to invade my spinal struts.:: There was no keeping his sour mood from his words, even though the prospect of spending several pleasant hours with Hound was more than enough for it to start improving. ::I will trade you a detailing and polish if you could help me evict it from my frame. A low-gloss finish, as you prefer.::

A sound of conflicted temptation came across the comm, shooting Mirage’s hopes down before they had a chance to fully form.

::I’m so sorry, Ratchet has me in medical for at least one more shift after this one. Hang on-:: Hound’s apologetic and embarrassed subglyphs stopped Mirage dead in his tracks. Standing the middle of the corridor he felt concern flowing cool and prickly through his lines. ::I just asked and he _definitely_ won’t let me out. Jazz owes me a favour for writing his last two general reports so I’ll send him your way. He’s not really in a meeting right now; the glitch is playing hide-and-seek with Prowl.::

::Is something causing you difficulties?:: Mirage fell back on formality as his worry became too strong to ignore. Ratchet just _didn’t_ confine off-duty mechs to medical for multiple consecutive shifts without reason, and Hound hadn’t been involved in any accidents that Mirage had heard about. ::Are you alright?::

There was a brief pause, several beats of silence as if Hound was surprised by the intensity of his questions.

::He’s recalibrating my sensors; the crazy amount of pollen blowing around this year have been giving me problems.:: Hound said cautiously. Ops didn’t like admitting weaknesses, even to other agents but his subglyphs were so carefully chosen the answer almost sounded rehearsed. “The adjustments don’t take long, it’s all the testing after that takes time. My sensors were developed with more stable or barren environments in mind, the density of biota here means a _lot_ of adjusting.::

It was a good excuse, providing an eminently reasonable explanation for Hound’s many visits to medical during their time on Earth. It would also explain a lot of the stress Hound had been projecting before Mirage’s month skulking about the Nemesis. This year even the Decepticons hadn’t been able to escape the yellow, powdery microgametophytes, carrying some back to the ship aboard their frames with every excursion.

It _would_ have been a perfect excuse, if Hound hadn’t been speaking to a fellow Agent. If he hadn’t been talking to someone raised in the Towers, who’d learned to see through misdirection and lies in the cutthroat arena of Noble Politics while they were re-learning how to walk.

It was a shade too practiced, the subglyphs and intonation were _just_ off enough that when combined with Mirage’s knowledge of his friend the falsehood stood out like Optimus Prime surrounded by humans.

::My sympathies.:: Mirage sent, glyphs genuine and sparkfelt while his processor raced, figuring out likely reasons for Hound to be in Medical and lying about it. ::That sounds extremely unpleasant.::

::Primus, that’s the understatement of the _century_.:: Hound laughed a little, sounding relieved. ::Thank you.::

It was sent with such sincerity that Mirage cycled his optics at the wall several times in surprise.

::Not at all.:: Mirage said, hoping he didn’t sound as nonplussed as he felt. ::So long as Jazz shows up within the next half-hour I won’t have to maim him and come hunting for you in Ratchet’s realm.::

This chuckle sounded relaxed, more like the Hound he’d come to know and care about than the almost-stranger who’d delivered those rehearsed lines.

::I’m not sure who I’d put my money on in that situation.:: The Tracker-Scout sent, glyphs full of warm humour. ::I’ll tell Jazz to meet you in the nearest washracks to our quarters on pain of public humiliation. I still have some blackmail photos in reserve from his first encounter with magpies.::

Now _that_ little tidbit piqued Mirage’s interest almost as much as the question of ‘What the slag is going on with Hound?’.

::Please, _please_ start thinking of what you would like from me in exchange for a chance to witness these images.:: Mirage sent fervently. ::In the meantime; _do_ take care of yourself, my friend. May Primus and his Thirteen smile upon you.::

A strangely melodic and half-smothered sound that Mirage couldn’t identify came across the comms. It was followed by a brief period of silence and then Hound replied.

::You too, my friend.::

#### ~V~V~V~

::Mirage?::

The ping came on a relatively private frequency. It wasn’t out of the ordinary, but it was just unusual enough that he had to suppress the urge to look over at the other mech. They were supposed to be paying attention to the human performance. With the Autobots being given seats of honour it would be terribly obvious if he turned his helm even the tiny fraction required for him to see Hound.

::What is it, Hound?::

::Nobody’s gonna notice if you turn your audials down, or off.:: Was the surprising reply. ::You’re twitching, and it _is_ kinda loud.::

With a jolt of surprise Mirage realised that Hound was right.

He was flexing his armour in time to the music, swaying minutely in place. If one wasn’t from the Towers or didn’t know of the ways that were considered acceptable there for showing ones appreciation of a performance, it would indeed look like he was bored and twitchy.

Without noticing what he was doing, Mirage had been falling back into old habits.

Habits he had been trying to break so he would have a little less social trouble with the other mechs here on Earth.

Shame filled him as he responded.

::I’m sorry, I am actually quite enjoying this performance. My taste in music was considered… quite eccentric in the Towers.:: His words came out in a jumbled rush, fresh embarrassment compounding the old as he remembered the sneers aimed his way once his preference for foreign music became known in the Towers. ::I was… Ah, subtle movement in time with the music was considered an appropriate way of showing your appreciation of a piece. I didn’t realise I was doing it. My apologies, I did not mean to distract you.::

Hound’s Field buzzed thoughtfully

::Ah, you had someone else in charge of the music for your parties then.:: He teased, then surprised Mirage by inclining his head to indicate somewhere near the front of the crowd. ::You mean something like those humans over there?::

Following the motion with his optics, Mirage was surprised to see a large group of humans standing to the right of the stage. They all had one or both hands raised above their heads, moving their hands in time with the distinctive heavy beat of the song. Focusing on their faces, he could see that some were clearly trying to sing along with the lyrics, while others were wearing various expressions of joy.

If he had been any less well-trained by his teachers both before and after the fall of the Towers, Mirage knew he would have displayed more open signs of shock other than freezing perfectly still. His sudden change to the status of a living statue didn’t go unnoticed by the others sitting nearby, but he didn’t bother with them.

::Yes, _exactly_ like that; although far less vigorous.:: He couldn’t keep the surprise out of his gyphs. ::…How strange.::

As always, Hound somehow divined his meaning from an uncompleted thought.

::Strange that humans would have some cultural parallels with the Towers?:: He asked, good humour and the sense that he agreed with Mirage coming clearly across their lightly tangled Fields. ::Stranger things _have_ happened in the universe.::

::Indeed they have.:: Mirage sent back, forcing himself to relax and focus on the music again. ::And many of the strange things here on Earth have turned out to be unexpectedly good.::

Mirage couldn’t help the way his optics drifted sideways, seeking out Hound in the flickering stagelights as he said that. He didn’t know why it happened, only that it did and Hound was looking back at him with the strangest expression he’d ever seen on another mech’s face. It was so out-of-tune with his EM projections that it took Mirage a while to pin down the dominant emotions behind it.

_For someone who seems so happy, he looks very sad._

#### ~V~V~V~

Cold, soaking rain was absolutely pelting down outside the Ark. There were floodlights in the formal gardens now and it would probably look very pretty if one was in the mood for a rainy nighttime walk. Most of the off-duty Autobots weren’t. It was movie night, with the headline film being some generic action-and-explosions thing most of the frontliners couldn’t get enough of.

With Mirage on post-mission isolation after another short foray into the _Nemesis_, Hound had no reason to go if he didn’t want to. Without the excuse of needing to ‘force’ the Noble to socialise, Hound had taken one look at the synopsis of tonight’s feature and decided to have a quiet night instead.

Comfortably alone in his quarters, Hound relaxed and burrowed into his nest. Engine purring softly, he made himself comfortable and pulled out a datapad of trashy romance novels he’d borrowed from Perceptor. A small container of sweet carbon-and-rust lumps he’d bartered from Sideswipe sat in his subspace for later.

Snacks and self-indulgent reading in blissful peace and quiet.

It was the kind of evening that had seemed impossible a few short decades ago, minus the time in stasis.nJust what the doctor would have ordered, if he hadn’t still been sleeping off a hangover.

_Ironhide will _never_ figure out why Ratchet can drink both him and Prime under the table. It won’t keep him from trying, though._

Chuckling quietly to himself, Hound finally settled on a familiar old favourite and began to read. Soft background noise filtered through from the main room, a CD of whale song and piano music that Mirage had found somewhere and thought Hound might like.

It was… well; it was alien background noise he didn’t have to pay much attention to, and it covered any sounds that might filter through from the corridor outside.

Something twinged in the back of his mind and he frowned at the datapad. Automatically he checked his private calendar. He wasn’t due for another code patch for two or three weeks at the rate of decay they’d worked out from the degradation of previous ones. Shrugging, he pulled the box of Sideswipe-Brand candy from subspace and settled back into his reading.

Then without warning, the patch suppressing his upset Brooding Code failed.

**DEBUG COMPLETE**

  
** REMOVED FOREIGN INFLUENCE:**   
** <PATCH 5Y|\|GT|-|-1|\|CBR00D-R4T42>**

  
** ALL SYSTEMS NORMAL**

One moment Hound was reclining comfortably; curled against against a stack of pillows, completely and happily immersed in the trashy novel.

The next thing he understood was that the bottom had somehow fallen out of the world, and a tsunami of unspeakable pain swept in to crush him.

Emptiness consumed Hound as he curled into a ball around his gestation/maturation chamber. Over the groan of cold-started cooling fans his vocaliser hissed with static as it fought to execute conflicting commands to cry and scream. Despair and worthlessness took root in his spark, spreading thorny tendrils out to wrap around every processing thread they could access.

Somehow, he activated his comms.

Somehow he found the only two codes that mattered.

_S-send. **Send**._

Looking back, Hound didn’t know what message he sent -if he managed to sen anything at all. Coherent thought was a thing of the past as he struggled in the face of sould-deep punishment that had been too long denied.

Vents and fans whistling from the force of his ragged panting, Hound dug his fingers into his own plating and focused everything he had on enduring. Existing.

_Just have to… hold on._

_Hold on._

#### ~V~V~V~

Ratchet was already on his pedes and out the door before Teletraan-1 could give him Hound’s location.

_His quarters._

It was a quiet evening in the Autobot base’s residential corridors, so there was nobody around to see him racing with all the speed and grace of an enraged elephant to the aid of imperilled Kin. The racket he made could have woken the dead.

_Thank goodness the Officers’ Quarters got soundproofing last month…_

As Ratchet skidded around the corner into the Ops hallway, a distant thought-thread supposed he should probably contact Jazz. Just in case he needed help restraining an injured Agent.

An agitated Field crackled against his in a split-second warning.

The black-and-white field-frame blur of _Jazz_ tore past him, all the mech’s old Ovaria speed screeching to a halt outside Hound’s door. Claw-tipped fingers flew over the locking panel while Ratchet took two more steps. The door opened and Jazz was already inside by the time Ratchet made it to the open entranceway. Despite the majority of his active processes _screaming_ at him to _find/protect/heal/defend/restore/comfort/safeguard/make well_ the Incubator-Medic still took used a precious second to close the door behind himself, ensuring the other Incubator’s privacy before returning to his mission.

_Get to Hound._

Jazz barred his path.

The smaller Syngnath stood frozen in the open berthroom door, keening a high-pitched, whining sound that set Ratchet’s denta on edge. When he got closer, the sound combined with the sudden and swiftly controlled icy prickle of Jazz’s Field and sent his raging defensive protocols into overdrive.

Charging forwards, bodily shoved Jazz out of the way.

Then he _saw_.

Hound curled in his nest, shaking uncontrollably as he sobbed like an abandoned sparkling.

Recognition curled through the green Incubator’s Field where it rolled against them, followed by a sucking tide of despair and incoherent pleading.

It wasn’t hard to figure out what had happened. It was all there in Hound’s Field as it beat at them, bruising the sensors of his chevron and probably Jazz’s half-hidden horns as well. Jazz hadn’t stopped keening, the sound intensifying as together they reached for Hound and enfolded him in the intangible security of their combined EM presence.

_This is too soon. We should have had at _least_ another week. What_ happened?!

Swearing fluently, Ratchet slapped a hand into a subspace pocket. Jazz was shivering in reaction as Hound’s Field clung to them and Ratchet’s fingers closed around an injector loaded with a premeasured sedative that he’d started keeping on him just for this purpose. He’d put this plan together with Jazz -the SpecOps head was so careful with his Agents that he planned for every singly contingency he could possibly think of.

They hadn’t been prepared for Jazz to be _quite_ so affected by Hound’s distress, but Ratchet was more than capable of getting all of them through this.

_Sedate him, get that Field under control and get him to Medical for stasis until we can figure out what went wrong._

Even though he had responded to their Fields, Ratchet wasn’t expecting Hound to be coherent enough to realise that they were _there_, let alone still have enough processor power available to communicate.

But he did, begging them for mercy in broken glyphs. His voice crackling and hissing while his Field bled inexpressible pain. Jazz’s keen became a melodic growl as Ratchet approached with the sedative, short claws flexing on smooth green armour as he clutched Hound tightly to his chest.

_I’m sorry._

Putting the hypospray against a large energon line in Hound’s neck, Ratchet pressed down.

Mute acceptance filled his friend’s Field as the sedative took affect, dropping him into a drugged sleep.

_I’m so sorry._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Watching a bunch of Nobles at a concert they really enjoy is kinda like watching a bunch of trees moving in the wind.
> 
> Those times when all you can do is lie on the floor and NOT give in to the need to act on behaviours... yeah -.-;;
> 
> I had to do that to Hound. I'll be in the corner feeling guilty if you want to come yell at me.


	9. Eight: Red Flags, Red Alert

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Mirage gets confirmation he needs that all is not right with Hound.  
Ratchet gets an unexpected (but not completely unwelcome) late-night visitor.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Red Alert just keeps swanning in and making himself at home. I stopped arguing with him and just let him at it.
> 
> I was extremely tired while editing most of this, I'm so sorry.

Going through post-mission Rehabilitation Protocols twice in a handful of months was tiresome.

Mirage bore it as best he could, taking comfort in the fact that this mission hadn’t been as long as the last and the recovery time would be reduced correspondingly.

In fact, he was already at the stage where he was able to attend Medical check-ins without Bumblebee or Jazz supervising. He had just finished one such appointment with First Aid, deliberately scheduled for when the corridors would be relatively quiet. Heading back to his quarters with his electro-disruptor engaged, Mirage smiled to himself and wiggled his fingers in a cheeky little wave at one of Red Alert’s cameras as he turned into the Ops corridor.

Almost if he’d summoned it, absolute pandemonium descended upon the quiet hallway.

Throwing himself back against the wall, Mirage pressed his frame flat to the cool orange metal. Pulling his Field in tight, he watched in wide-opticed shock as Jazz hit Point Position in the corridor, visor blazing as he cased the area before the door he’d burst through even hit the wall.

_What in the slag?!_

It was all too easy to fall back into active mission protocols at the threat of discovery. Stilling every nonessential system and pushing vital ones down to the barest minimum needed to stay alert and functional, his stealth mods activating in a line of reassuring green tiles across the lower part of his HUD as Jazz’s battle-claws erupted from his fingertips.

Everything finished activating just in time. Mirage suppressed a shiver at the close call as multiple scans from Jazz’s powerful sensor suite bombarded the corridor despite visually confirming a lack of occupation.

_That door… That’s _Hound’s_ quarters._

After a couple of seconds to process results the results of those scans and some blatantly obvious inaudible communication, Jazz made a beckoning motion.

Slowly, Ratchet emerged from Hound’s quarters while Jazz bristled aggressively at thin air.

When Mirage saw Hound cradled in Ratchet’s arms his spark sank to his pedes. A chill suffused his frame as he took in the expressions and set of armour, how the CMO held the unconscious Agent as if the green mech was as delicate as the Witwicky’s newborn.

The instant Ratchet and his previous burden were clear of the doorway both Officers took off towards Medical, with Jazz acting as if they were moving through hostile territory despite them being in one of the safest parts of Earth Base.

_Oh. Oh, no. It’s worse than I thought…_

All of Mirage’s earlier concerns about the green mech returned, combined with his still-active mission protocols and set free the curiosity that he had been suppressing for years. Without a thought, he dropped in behind the two-mech procession; shadowing his Superiors and their unconscious cargo all the way back to medical.

With Ratchet so distracted by Hound’s predicament, all Mirage had to do was avoid detection by Jazz. Given how keyed-up the mech was it was _difficult_, but not _impossible_.

Staying out of the medic’s rather extensive EMF-sensing range was harder to remember.

Mirage had never pinpointed the extent of Ratchet’s ability to perceive the Fields of others, something he cursed now as he was too far away to make it undetected through the medbay doors before they closed on his targets. He’d been too distracted by his own worry for Hound to properly keep track of their progress through the corridors -a slip that could have had _major_ repercussions if it had happened out in the field.

Stymied, Mirage stood in the middle of the empty corridor and glared at the solidly closed doors, willing them to open.

_What happened?_

Hound had been unwell before, but this was fundamentally _different_.

The uncharacteristic agitation of both Jazz and Ratchet and the haste with which they’d been moving suggested nothing good.

_It can’t _only_ be his sensor suite acting up. There would have been more signs._

Retracing his steps to the Ops corridor, Mirage saw that the door to Hound’s quarters was still open.

Acting on impulse, Mirage slid through the narrow gap and stopped just across the threshold, suddenly unwilling to intrude any further.

This wasn’t a mission; this was his best friend’s privacy he was so casually invading to sate his Spy-grade curiosity.

_The friend I _care_ about, more than…_

Firmly shutting down all active thought-threads, Mirage quickly scanned the room for any signs of other uninvited guests.

_Check and get out._

An untidy workshop that took up half the room brought a smile to his invisible face. Dozens of unfinished projects covered a low bench that spoke of Hound sitting on the floor to work with the fabrics and threads atop it. From the layout it seemed that Hound would work facing a large entertainment system set into the rock of the opposite wall.

Inexplicably, Mirage’s vents hitched as he took in the shelves beneath the large flatscreen; shelves filled with neatly arranged DVDs of documentary series and framed photographs mostly taken here on Earth. He raised a hand to his chestplates, as if that would calm the strange twitching of his spark.

One photo in particular stood out from the rest.

It was a shot of Hound with dozens of pigeons sitting calmly on his helm and shoulders. The dermal metal at the corners of Hound’s optics had crinkled up as he smiled at the camera,.

_I… don’t want to lose him._

Hound was the only mech on Earth who’d been unfailingly kind to him without an ulterior motive. One of the most capable reliable mission partners he’d ever been paired with. He was the _only_ mech _anywhere_ who could make a patrol on muddy, unpaved roads into an adventure instead of a chore.

_Hound…_

After a quick sensor-sweep for intruders, Mirage backed out of Hound’s quarters and closed the door firmly behind himself. The lock engaged automatically, the sound somehow crystallising something in his mind. Hound might be unwell and hiding it with the help of Command, but that didn’t mean Mirage was content to go along with their little charade.

_You shouldn’t have to suffer alone…_

### ~V~V~V~

Leaving Hound alone in Medical without Jazz watching over him was _incredibly_ difficult.

Ratchet reminded himself repeatedly that they needed to avoid notice, handing over the department to First Aid and leaving with slow steps and a spark that felt like it had been spun from solid lead.

It _didn’t matter_ the green Incubator was safely locked away in the most secure private room the Ark Base possessed. It didn’t matter that the danger of Hound being discovered was impossibly low. Nobody could get in, not with Jazz watching from afar. Hound _definitely_ couldn’t get up and walk out; he was deep in medical stasis and wouldn’t be allowed to wake until Ratchet was on-shift again.

None of it mattered to his base-level subroutines; no amount of logic or common sense could convince them or his spark that this was the best thing to do to avoid suspicion.

Ratchet _still_ wanted to be there, just in case.

::Go rest, mech.:: Jazz’s voice sad softly over a private commline, startling Ratchet even though he wasn’t surprised that he was being spied on. ::You _know_ he’s too far under to feel our Fields and know we’re there.::

Although the camera wouldn’t transmit the unhappy rumble of his engine, Jazz could probably infer it quite nicely from the way Ratchet scowled and flipped the camera off.

Of course, he ignored it.

::I’ll watch the cameras and check on his Field in person every hour, same as usual.:: Jazz reminded him unnecessarily. ::Go get some fuel and recharge before you pass out on your feet.::

;;Yes, _Boss_.:: Ratchet said sarcastically, glaring at the camera. ::You _know_ I can recharge just the same in Iso with him, right?::

::Not after finding him like _that_ you won’t.:: Jazz said flatly, his tone implacable. ::And you know it. _Go_, I’ll let you know the instant anything changes.::

They’d had similar arguments before, and each time Ratchet had defied Jazz’s wishes when he used those particular subglyphs there had been cruel and unusual revenge exacted upon him.

Calculated, personal and absolutely positively _100% Prowl-sanctioned_ revenge.

Not that Prowl knew all the details; only that the CMO was overworking himself again.

_Slagger. And he’s threatened to start getting _Optimus_ involved, too._

::_Fine_.:: He snarled down the commlink. ::You win.”

Keeping his Field pulled close to hide just how upset he was with the whole situation, Ratchet finished entering carefully edited data into Hound’s official file and let First Aid know he was leaving.

_Presumably_ he was going back to his interrupted recharge, but in reality Ratchet knew he was going to spend the rest of the night wide awake and fretting just as badly as if he’d stayed to keep watch over Hound.

First Aid waved farewell as Ratchet stomped out, offering a cheery ‘recharge well’ as he passed. So far as Ratchet could tell, the combiner Medic assumed Jazz had called Ratchet in to deal with Hound as his own security clearance wasn’t high enough. The younger mech had _plenty_ of experience by now with the crazy situations that happened routinely on Earth and performed beautifully, but he didn’t have the kind of training required to deal with Jazz’s Agents and Ratchet wasn’t about to force a sworn pacifist through the violence that training required.

_It’s a good thing ‘Aid _isn’t_ cleared to work with Ops Emergencies; he’d be very upset about this one…_

Back in his quarters, Ratchet took his anger at Jazz to an online game he happened to know that both Blaster and Soundwave’s cassettes played.

The next couple of hours were spent channelling his frustration into pure petty mischief. Redecorating Rumble and Frenzy’s base with garden gnomes and replacing the contents of their hidden storage area with nothing but rocks _always_ cheered him up.

_Thanks for the quest drops, glitches._

Mood greatly improved, Ratchet logged off and stretched, only to freeze when someone pinged a polite request for entry to his quarters.

Checking his chronometer, he frowned. A request for entry wasn’t uncommon at this time of night, not even in his private quarters. Between Jazz and Hound needing the reassurance of their own kind and Bluestreak seeking company after a nightmare he had company for recharge more often than not.

But none of those three would be paying him a visit tonight, as Hound was in stasis, Jazz plotting in his office and Bluestreak was on monitor duty.

_Who?_

The entry-request ping repeated, this time with a designation attached.

_Red Alert? What is _he_ doing here?_

Wary, Ratchet made sure his berthroom door was closed and latched before bracing himself and allowing the Security Head into his quarters.

“What brings you here?” Ratchet asked with perfectly feigned nonchalance as Red immediately began checking the door to make sure it had locked behind him. “I’m not objecting to the visit, but this is unusual for you.”

So unusual, in fact, that Ratchet was analysing the smaller mech’s actions closely and preparing himself to sedate the mech if this involved an episode of his glitch.

When Red Alert had satisfied himself that the room was secure, he turned and faced Ratchet with a deadly serious expression. Everything about his posture and the Field that reached out to brush against Ratchet was steady and calm. There was concern present, but nothing like the overwhelming, jagged-lightning apprehension that accompanied many of his episodes here on Earth. Ratchet was so surprised by this that he fumbled through closing down active diagnostic and patient-care routines, giving Red Alert the opening he needed.

“Hound.” The Head of Security said, worry for a friend spiking through his Field beneath the professional concern. “How is he?”

Suddenly hyperaware of the mech’s round optical inlets, Ratchet tried desperately to guess at what Red Alert wanted. Concern for their fellow mech was a trait the vast majority of Autobots had in abundance, but in this case too much of this concern would be bad for all of them.

“He’s doing as well as can be expected after a sensory-overload crash.” Ratchet said carefully.

The knowing look Red Alert gave him then froze the energon in Ratchet’s lines.

“Ratchet; I know what’s up with you lot so _please_ do me a favour? Cut the crap and tell me the truth.” Red Alert said, tone sharp but his glyphs as deliberate and clear as his Field. “My reality processing matrix _is_ glitched but I’m not _stupid_. You have _nothing_ to fear from me; _none_ _of **you** do_.”

The plural rang in Ratchet’s horrified audials, a death knell for the last small handful of their kind. Fear rose, thick and crackling as his vocaliser activated and clicked off again.

After a long minute of pure, white-noise panic the rest of Red’s glyphs _finally_ processed. When they did Ratchet was suddenly able to taken in the feeling of his Field where it pressed determinedly against him.

It was open, honest and desperately worried.

“_Please_ don’t panic,” Red Alert was muttering, half to himself as his hands hovered uselessly midair. “I _really_ don’t want to tell Prime that I broke the CMO. He’ll give me that _look_ and I’ll _want_ to tell him everything but I _can’t_.”

Abruptly, not caring if there was anything behind him or not, Ratchet sat. The hydraulics in his legs simply refused to hold him up any longer. The couch he crashed gracelessly onto creaked in protest, threatening to join his hydraulics in rebellion.

“How?” Ratchet asked, rubbing the base of his chevron. The mounting ached. “_How_ do you know about…”

The enormity of the situation was too much for him. His processors simply refused to

“I watch, I observe and I think about what I’ve seen.” Red Alert shrugged rather helplessly, moving slowly to stand almost at attention before the CMO.

The CMO whom he knew was a Syngnath.

“It was back on Cybertron, before the war.” Red Alert’s hands twitched until he clasped them together to fidget subtly with his opisthenar plating. “I think there was a family group or something like it living near me. I watched them, and others like them when I figured it out. But they never did anything like all the stories you hear. None of them did.”

There was no controlling the twitching and rolling of Ratchet’s Field. All of his conflicting emotions filtered through it and the Security Chief picked them up as easily as breathing. Rolling his optics, Red Alert suddenly relaxed. He waved a dismissive hand and moved to sit in one of Ratchet’s lounge chairs.

“Pah, I never trusted rumours and hearsay anyway. Never know who’s making slag up or trying to manipulate people.” Waving a dismissive hand, the Cybertronian moved to sit in one of Ratchet’s armchairs, telegraphing his movements carefully.

“Back on the subject; I learned _how_ to spot **your type** and I kept an optic out for any I identified in the Autobots.” A modest shrug and pulse of his Field accompanied that astonishing statement. “I’ve never seen _anything_ that would justify the treatment you’d get –at least from mechs in the Autobots. You lot watch our backs, so I’ve been doing my best to watch yours.”

Having apparently gotten the most important information out of the way Red Alert paused for a moment, watching Ratchet carefully as his words sank in.

Everything about the conversation was completely unprecedented. Ratchet struggled to comprehend what was going on.

After a generous amount of time, Red Alert finally spoke again, gently, as if he was talking to an anxious youngling.

“I’m _worried_ about Hound.” His Field rang with sincerity. “He’s a _good_ mech and he’s not doing well. Please, tell me; how bad _is_ it? Is there anything I should watch out for and let you know about? Primus knows he’s the type of idiot to go suffer in silence rather than go to medbay. I don’t want to just watch and sit on my hands if there’s something I could do to help.”

All the while, Red Alert’s Field was wide open, inviting the Incubator to read him as deeply as he needed to.

“Primus take me… You’re telling the truth, aren’t you.” Ratchet said, feeling distinctly overwhelmed. The ache was spreading from his chevron mount to consume his cranial structure. “Have you spoken to anyone else about this? Any of this?”

Ratchet needed to know.

He thought he could guess the answer but he still _needed_ to hear it.

Red Alert shook his head, Field firm.

“Nobody; you’re the first.” Red Alert said succinctly, then started ticking off the Earth-based Autobot Syngnathi on his fingers with terrifying accuracy. “Hound doesn’t need the stress and Jazz would kill first and ask questions of my corpse.”

Serious, round-pupilled blue optics met Ratchet’s stunned gaze and held it.

“You were my best bet for getting answers _and_ permission to be useful.”

Ratchet shook his helm, admiration for the mech’s cunning and accurate assessment of the various personalities involved flitting through him. Unexpectedly, the movement made him dizzy even though he was already sitting down. Red Alert’s Field was completely open to him, inviting him –practically _begging_ him- to probe for the Cybertronian’s sincerity.

Given how often and the circumstances under which Ratchet had dealt with the mech since his joining the Autobots, Ratchet found he didn’t need to.

_This is Red at his most sincere. Primus, I’m glad he’s on **our** side…_

“You’ve got it ‘in a nutshell’, as Agent Fowler says.” Ratchet said with a sigh. “We’re going to need to have a proper conversation about all this later. For now; Hound is suffering at the hands of his core coding. It isn’t contagious, but it isn’t anything we can solve with the resources we have on earth.” Ratchet said, provoking a wince and a sympathetic expression from the Head of Security. “The best we can do are patch jobs that buy him time, but even that has a time limit.”

Carefully telegraphing his every motion, Red Alert leaned forwards and rested his forearms on his thighs, still watching Ratchet with an intensity of focus that would scare a lesser mech.

“Tell me, what can I do to help?” He asked, voice and Field so sincere there wasn’t a single reason to doubt him.

So Ratchet chose to believe, and to trust.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Meet my managed-paranoid-schizophrenia!Red Alert. He's a bit different to canon and popular fanon, because I've never liked the way his glitch has been dealt with.  
Also, Ratchet very nearly crashed from a panic attack here.
> 
> MIRAGE, JUST ADMIT TO YOURSELF THAT YOU LOVE THE MECH FFS


	10. Nine: Two Steps Forwards

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Mirage goes hunting for information about Hound's mysterious illness and discovers something completely unexpected.  
Hound's biology finds new ways to make his life difficult.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm a day behind schedule bc my absolute best friend went into labour yesterday and I got distracted. The only good thing about the 17hr time difference is being able to provide moral support when everyone back home is passed out asleep :/ other than that it's pretty shit.  
Everything went well there's a new kiddo to be the Bad Example Aunty for, even though I won't get to actually meet them for a couple of years.

Nothing.

Absolutely _nothing_.

_How is this possible?!_

There should be threads, crumbs, _wisps_ of usable information at the very least.

In reality? Complete and utter radio silence on _all possible channels_.

Suppressing a growl of frustration, Mirage indulged himself in a frown that could have melted metal. He studied his reflection in the screen of the commsuite terminal in his quarters, making minute adjustments until the expression reflected his absolute loathing for a fruitless search.

A private commsuite; it was a perk –and source of potential danger- that came with being the nominal 2IC of Autobot Special Operations on Earth.

Whatever was behind Hound’s collapse, it had been bad enough to need both the CMO _and_ the head of SpecOps to his quarters.

And yet _somehow_, absolutely no word of it had percolated around the Ark by the next evening. Normally anything that went on in the Ark or around Earth Base was gossip fodder within twenty-four human hours.

Either this was so routine an event now that the gossip mill didn’t even consider it worthy of consideration (unlikely); or someone high in the command structure was working _very_ hard to make sure word didn’t spread to the rest of the crew (more likely).

After what he had witnessed the previous evening, the fact that Hound’s possible illness _hadn’t_ made the rounds was enough to provide a lead on at least one of Mirage’s suspicions. Using his backdoor into Teletraan’s Command messaging logs uncovered the evidence he needed. A sudden flurry of communication between Jazz, Ratchet, Red Alert and Prowl with timestamps beginning while he had been trailing the officers and their unconscious burden towards Medical.

So it _was_ known to Command, and they _were_ keeping knowledge of it out of general circulation.

… _So;_ _Jazz is covering for Hound._

It was the only explanation for the total lack of chatter in the gossip mill.

Mirage himself had no way to find out how serious it was unless he asked Hound himself.

Something clenched around Mirage’s spark, a tight band of almost-pain whose origin he couldn’t pinpoint.

Pressing his palm to his chestplates, Mirage let his attention turn inwards. Time slipped by in silent contemplation as he tried to discern the cause of the strange feeling. The source of the discomfort wasn’t easy to discover –he was almost as good at lying to himself as he was at lying to others.

Eventually he was forced to confront a truth he hadn’t wanted to look at.

_I… really _do_ like Hound as something more than a friend._

Social rules forged into his very code and reinforced by later lessoning had been painfully eroded under hard training, but they were still strong enough to have hidden this from him for a long, long time. Long enough now that as he looked back over memories of the last few years he realised it was very likely Smokescreen had a very large betting pool running on himself and Hound.

That particular thought caused a subconscious algorithm to flag up several recent interactions with Autobots around base as ‘unusual: important’. Running those and then several decades of memory files through a filtering program led him to the conclusion that not only _was_ there a betting pool, some of their human allies were in on it too.

_…And Bumblebee was the last to collect winnings on something related to interactions between Hound and myself._

Now that Mirage was consciously aware of the extent of his own feelings it was much easier to work himself free of the unpleasant legacy of his heritage and upbringing. When finally he managed to clear the mental thicket of convoluted coding the realisations fell into place thick and fast. One after another in a cascade of confessions to himself that ended with the stunned Noble staring drop-jawed into space.

_Oh. Oh, my. Well, _this_ certainly complicates things. _

#### ~V~V~V~

Hound came up out of medical stasis feeling like Devastator had thrown a really wild party inside his cranial case. Whatever had happened, his systems were interpreting some sort of damage as bruised neural circuitry.

_That’s not right. No damage sensors there…_

The comfortingly familiar mental presence of Jazz –safe, dependable, Boss and _Kin_\- moved to lay lines of diversion code between Hound and the pain. With the buffer in place Hound relaxed, trusting Jazz to find the source of the errors and watching patiently as he isolated the damaged areas and repaired them.

When he finally decided to pay attention to his chronometer, Hound saw that two days had passed since the last time he remembered looking at it.

_I wasn’t working, so… Battle damage?_

::Hard shutdown?:: Hound asked, floating the question into the linkup with non-urgent markers, perfectly happy to wait for Jazz’s answer.

::You could say so.:: Was the response, meaning that whatever had happened, it _definitely_ hadn’t been related to a mission or a breakdown tied to his status as an Agent. ::You were distraught; Ratchet had to sedate you then put you under once you were out.:: Considering how bad it could have been, that sounded mild enough to Hound. ::Has your memory booted up yet?::

Hound slid a pouty ‘Do Not Want’ image into the connection. The updated memory cache had been loading slowly in his background processes but he was reluctant to open it. Despite Jazz’s help his brain module still felt bruised and he didn’t want to find out exactly what had caused it right at that second.

::Want me to tell you before you let it load?:: Jazz’s words across the hardline were full of sympathy and understanding.

::Please::

::The block on your Brooding Code went down all at once, instead of eroding slowly they way it normally does.:: The information was given in glyphs as unadorned and dry as if Jazz was reading from one of Ultra Magnus’ reports. ::You managed to comm me an’ Ratchet and hold on until we could get to you.::

When it came to their trade Jazz was the best that Cybertron had ever produced, but in the realms of their Kin there _were_ some tells that he hadn’t learned to cover entirely.

::What aren’t you telling me?:: Hound asked, releasing control over the Syngnathi harmonics of his Field and _pressing_ against Jazz. ::What else did you find?::

::Your antivirals are adapting faster each time, we _knew_ that.:: Jazz hedged, giving way far too easily beneath Hound’s demanding pressure as his Field became a giant fuzzy cushion of _comfort_. ::It looks like this is going to be the norm from now on; having them break down without warning.::

::Slag.:: Given that he hadn’t allowed his memory cache to finish updating yet, Hound could afford to be matter-of-fact. ::That’s _not_ going to be good. What else?::

::Damming it up like this is making the Egg-Hunger and Emotional Punishment subroutines of the Brooding Code strengthen faster than they normally would.:: Even Jazz, the unflappable and more-than-slightly-crazy Jazz Meister, sounded like he was cringing as he send the information through the hardline, bracing himself for an emotional storm that Hound wasn’t going to produce.

Not right at that moment, anyway.

Maybe later. When he remembered his side of the last day or two.

::We’re keeping ahead of it for now.:: Jazz continued carefully. ::If it gets any worse or starts to mutate faster then Ratchet is going to order you to Cybertron and call in a favour Blurr owes him.::

_Blurr_. _Ugh_.

Hound’s engine rumbled in revulsion at the thought.

If there was another Syngnathi that could get on Hound’s nerves so thoroughly, he had yet to meet them. The feeling was mutual; their bickering a source of endless amusement and confusion to the universe outside Autobot Ops. Hound was quite happy to far, far away from the blue Ovaria.

_Personal feelings don’t matter, though. Not when it comes to Kin._

::Oh joy; a _pity fuck_.:: Hound said when he could finally put his reaction into words. ::Not even a _pity_ fuck. It’s a reluctant _duty fuck_ after having his arm twisted by the CMO.:: The depths of his distaste didn’t seem to bother Jazz at all. ::What do you expect us to _do?_ Close our eyes and think of England?::

The comment was beneath him, but Hound didn’t care. Not even when a thick wave of reproach rolled from Jazz and smothered him –it only turned the barest edges of his resentful anger into an ashy coating of shame. _Unfair, unfair, unfair!_ He insisted, clinging desperately to the ability to think relatively normally.

::He’s changed a lot since you last saw eachother.:: Jazz said, his mental presence still censuring Hound for his antagonism towards another Syngnath that Jazz still doubtlessly considered one of his own. ::_You’ve_ changed. There’s a very good chance you could stand being in the same room without wanting to rip his face off, now.::

Petulantly, Hound pretended to ignore that very salient point and allowed his memory cache to initialise as slowly as possible in an attempt to change the subject. Jazz was _right_, of course. The slagger was usually right when it came to his read on a mech’s character.

It didn’t make Hound resent the suggestion any less.

::There’s a good Spark hiding behind all that flash and vocaliser.:: Jazz pressed the words home with unyielding firmness, forcing Hound to pay attention to the detail in his subglyphs. ::Think about it. That’s all I’m going to say on the matter for now.::

::Yeah, until Ratchet has to pull strings and we’re facing one of those stupid ‘fuck or die’ situations from those romance stories Blue likes so much.:: The bitterness in Hound’s Field _finally_ convinced Jazz to pursue the change in subject.

::Primus, the look on Epps’ face when Blue asked him if he ‘shipped Spirk’ and explained what he meant.:: Jazz helpfully sent an image capture, just in case Hound had somehow forgotten. ::I didn’t know humans could _make_ that noise.::

While they bantered Hound’s memory cache activated one slow section at a time, corrupted ones already dealt with by the combined forces of Jazz and Ratchet. Their work left him with a bare-bones knowledge of what had led up to the failure of the Brooding-Suppressant patch, along with some vivid flashes of what had happened between the patch failure and Ratchet knocking him out.

::I didn’t know they could turn that colour. I don’t think humans have a name for it yet.:: Hound tried to keep the banter light while his spark squirmed with shame at recalling that just three days ago he’d begged the closest family he had left to give him a merciful death. ::Sunstreaker might be able to help them with that one. Eppsian Puce, maybe?::

::Sounds like a good name for it.:: The light tone firmed, Jazz becoming more serious. ::Back to businessl we need to keep an eye on this new type of buffering patch and make sure it’s working properly before we let you more than a klik away from base.:: Jazz said, watching for a couple of minutes to ensure that Hounds active processes were running smoothly. ::You’re on light duties for the next three weeks to make sure we’ve gotten this one right. Home territory patrol, human offspring wrangling and groundskeeping; that sort of thing. Ratchet has already gotten your schedule change approved by Prowl.::

Hound’s holographic projection abilities made him one of the babysitters most favoured by the children of human allies. The only reason Jazz was willing to let Optimus assign him to the task so much was that being around the children helped soothe the Incubator’s unhappy code.

::_Wonderful_.:: Hound’s response was dryer than a desert as their systems drew apart and Jazz disconnected. All he needed now was a check-over from Ratchet then he would be free to return to the safety of his quarters. ::I’ll make sure to take the Witwicky and Lennox Herd when I visit Prowl to say thanks.::

Laughing, Jazz rolled to his pedes with a flourish and offered Hound a hand up from the temporary nest.

“I’m sure he’ll _appreciate_ it.”

#### ~V~V~V~

The instant Hound left Medbay everything changed.

Twitching his armour to shake off the sense-memory of Ratchet’s disturbed Field buzzing in his EM sensors, he almost missed Mirage falling into step beside him. He realised what had happened just before the Noble’s Field reached out to brush against his. The lapse in his normal wariness was forgotten when a gentle wash of relief, welcome and what felt like genuine affection lapped over his still-tense Field.

“Were you getting into mischief while I was away?” Mirage’s words were teasing but there was something about his tone suggesting that the Noble was hiding concern. “Whatever it was, I _do_ hope the result was worth having to face down a disgruntled Ratchet afterwards.”

Despite his unsettled emotions and the corrupted memories of his breakdown hovering uncomfortably close to the surface, Hound still found himself fighting a smile at Mirage’s teasing.

_How does he _do_ that? No matter what, he can always make me smile._

Shaking his helm, Hound pinged Teletraan for his schedule. When it loaded up he froze mid-step, slow horror creeping over him. Mirage paused a moment later, half a step in front of him and projecting polite confusion as he turned back to face Hound.

The light duties Ratchet wanted him on were listed as Punishment Detail.

And Jazz hadn’t told him the cover story they were using.

_Slag. Slag slag slag slag-_

“I see.”

All cheeriness dropped from Mirage’s expression and EMF, Hound belatedly realising that he’d been projecting his panic for the other mech to read as clearly as if he’d been screaming at the top of his voice.

_Oh no._

A delicate, deadly hand took the terrified Incubator’s forearm in a gentle grip. Perfectly obedient, Hound obeyed the light pressure that hand exerted as Mirage guided the larger mech to turn until they were face to face. Clear yellow optics stared into his, round inlets transfixing Hound as if he was a rabbit in the path of an oncoming train.

_Why? Why am I _like_ this around him? How can he _do_ this to me?_

Mirage was a normal Cybertronian, a mech who could kill Hound in an instant if he discovered what he was. And yet Hound’s frame reacted as if there wasn’t any real danger. As if the slender blue-and-white Noble was as safe and trustworthy as a member of Clan or Kin.

_Or a Host-mate._

Deep coding purred approval as the traitorous thought drifted serenely through his otherwise frantic mind. He didn’t want or _need_ any more fodder for the dreams that teased him with what he so desperately wanted and _couldn’t_ have.

“Hound, I _know_ you have been unwell and that your sensors are causing more problems than you want everyone to know about.” Mirage said, his expression serious. “Given how much both armies gossip, that is an _eminently_ sensible move to make.”

By now Mirage had somehow managed to worm his way past the uncontrollable storm of confusion and fear Hound couldn’t keep from his Field. Utter sincerity and rock-solid conviction were offered to him; things he _desperately_ wanted to believe in even though he knew he couldn’t let himself do so.

_It’s not just _my_ life at stake here. Jazz, Ratchet…_

“I promise you, Hound; _I will not_ tell anyone the real reason you were in Medical; I swear it upon my Spark and the Core of my lost House.” Golden-yellow optics blazed, becoming Hound’s entire world as Mirage all but vibrated with the depth of feeling behind his oath. “_You are my friend_ and I want to _help_ you to the best of my abilities; to keep you safe and stand guard for you. _I_ _will not_ knowingly allow harm to come to you, be it by my action or inaction.”

Cycling his ventilation system, Mirage seemed to brace himself before slipping into the most formal spoken language of the Towers.

“I promise you this.” The glyphs were resonant, a spoken song that rang with the solemnity of a vow sworn before the Priests of Primus. “Hound; _I swear it_.”

Raw honesty and something vulnerable that Hound didn’t have the available processor power to parse washed over him. He was so intent on examining Mirage’s Field and frame language for any hint of a lie that nothing else really registered.

The Noble was good; he was very, _very_ good. With his background and training he couldn’t be anything but an excellent liar. But there were some things he just couldn’t hide from a Syngnath’s superior EM senses.

Especially not when Hound knew him so well.

_Mirage… Oh Primus; he’s telling the truth, isn’t he._

That support, the offer of comfort and shelter and _something_ _more_ was so incredibly tempting. It was everything Hound wanted. Everything he was _ached_ to accept what Mirage was offering and return the gift a thousand-fold. All he could do was stare, vocaliser choked with longing as the round optical inlets of Mirage’s optics threatened to swallow him whole.

Round. Not slitted.

Cybertronian.

Dangerous.

_I wish…_

Finally Mirage’s gaze shifted, tracking slowly downwards. This close, Hound could see every movement of the tiny parts behind brilliantly clear lenses. A flicker of concern across the Noble’s faceplates and a sudden sharpening of focus in his Field drew Hound’s attention to a strange feeling on his faceplates.

_Cold, wet… what?!_

Without him realising it, thin lubricating fluid had welled up and overflowed down the green mech’s cheeks in response to the emotions that were trying to tear his spark apart.

“_Hound_.” Mirage sounded shocked, raising the hand that hadn’t been touching Hound towards the Syngnath’s face. It froze, hovering awkwardly midair when Hound’s armour flexed and slid closer to his protoform in automatic response to the sudden movement “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to-”

“It’s ok.” Hound forced the words out through a rebellious vocaliser, raising the hard Mirage wasn’t restraining to scrub the liquid from his face. “I just wasn’t expecting it.” Resetting his vocaliser and resisting the temptation to hide behind his hand, Hound grabbed Mirage’s awkwardly hovering one instead and gave his slender, deadly fingers a gentle squeeze. “Thank you, Mirage. I’m honoured, _truly_ I am.” Recklessly, he opened his Field and spread it to encompass Mirage, allowing the blue Noble to read whatever he cared to. At the last second he remembered to hold back his Syngnathi harmonics, despite the uneasy twisting sensation deep in his chest.

“The same goes for you, my friend.” Hound offered what he could in return, smothering regret that he couldn’t match Mirage’s level of honesty. “Whatever you need, whenever you need it. If it is within my power to give, it is _yours_.”

The smile Mirage gave him was blinding in its brilliance.

Basking in the harmony of their enmeshed Fields, both mechs deliberately ignored the subglyphs they’d been using, silently agreeing to pretend that there had been nothing at all lurking beneath the surface.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I REGRET NOTHING
> 
> I don't know why, I just thought it would be funny if Hound and Blurr didn't get along in this AU. Something about them just rubbing eachother the wrong way and little things getting blown out of proportion and being petty and bitchy. It amuses me greatly. (I'm a horrible person.)


	11. Ten: Risktaking

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hound forces Ratchet to approve him for a Field Mission with Mirage.  
Is the payoff worth the price?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 5k word chapter. Enjoy.

Having the privacy and relative safety of personal quarters meant Hound hadn’t had problems with insomnia for a long, long time.

But life could never be that simple.

Ever since making that pseudo-nest while sharing a room with his fellow Agents, Hound’s recharge had been filled with dreams of Mirage.

These dreams consisted mostly of sweet, almost domestic bliss of a kind not found in war. Curled around eachother in a sleepy ball of entwined limbs and Fields in his nest, reclining side-by-side and rehashing one of the many conversations they’d had over rations or on patrol or long, lazy hours spent simply being close and enjoying one another’s company.

Recently, the dangerous interest Hound’s core coding had taken in the Noble as a potential Host-mate had combined with his steadily growing affection for the mech to produce a new and _very_ disconcerting type of dream.

Hound’s recharging processor had decided to populate some of his dreams with a Mirage that had somehow taken on Ovaria form. As was often the case with dreams, Ovaria-Mirage was better than anything Hound had dare imagine. The Noble became so beautiful that even in his dreams all Hound could do was stare and stutter as the blue and white mech smiled at him with a teasing wink of slitted yellow optics.

Thankfully for Hound’s peace of mind the Ovaria-Mirage dreams were rare. The vast majority of his dreams featured the Noble in his solidly Cybertronian form, keeping the number of blush-inducing memory fragments blessedly low. He was a past master of acting normally around Mirage while his spark and coding did odd things, after all.

Jazz found out about the dreams as a matter of course, teasing Hound gently in private. They both agreed not to tell Ratchet unless they started causing serious issues.

It gave Ratchet one less weapon to use against them when he flatly _refused_ to allow Hound to be assigned as Mirage’s partner on a high-risk infiltration mission. His logic was solid, his reasons for denying the medical clearance all legitimate concerns.

_It’s too dangerous for a solo mission. The chances of Lemures being detected before he can get in are too high; we _need_ Imito for this._

Every one of their carefully crafted arguments and preparations were shot down by sheer stubbornness and the implacable action of highly active Medical coding. The potential payoff of the mission was the _only_ reason Hound initiated a Challenge.

In their tiny Clan Ratchet was the default leader. There had been no reason for Hound to challenge his authority before this, but the Incubator-Medic had left him no choice.

_I can’t let you stop me. I _won’t_. _

Determined to do what needed to be done, the green Incubator pushed himself to his limits and beyond, finally forcing Ratchet to concede when the Medic’s vocaliser had crackled and rasped, crashing out of harmony with a gasping sob of denial.

Not even the pride in Jazz’s thoroughly impressed Field could take the edge off Hound’s guilt at forcing the older Syngnath to clear him for this operation. The Incubator-medic still kept his status, but it was less certain now.

_I’m sorry, Ratchet. _

Not being able to tell Optimus and Prowl the real reasons for his refusal to assign Hound and his inability to come up with a satisfactory cover story had been the deciding factors in Ratchet’s mind. He said as much while his Field bled bitterness and grief at his defeat. The potential payoff of this mission was all that kept Hound from changing his mind.

_I _will_ come back from this. I promise._

The night after their final mission briefing, less than twelve hours before departure, Hound’s traitorous processor decided to throw a colossal spanner into the works with a devastating new twist on his Mirage-dreams.

_They were in a nest, _his_ nest. Reinforced and rebuilt so that it wouldn’t have disgraced the berthroom of a Prime. Mirage’s Field was twined so deeply into his he swore the edges of it brushed the outer corona his spark as the noble laid back, taking Hound’s hands and bringing them to rest on his abdomen. Beneath his hands Hound could feel light armour beginning to shift. Impulsively, he lowered his helm and laid a horn against the Noble’s plating. Fuzzy, faint indistinct Fields greeted him, an answering croon left his vocaliser as Mirage laughed delightedly somewhere above him._

Hound woke from that dream with his vocaliser transformed to produce Syngnathi harmonics, humming a lullaby to both the imaginary eggs and the amazing Noble hosting them.

Behaving normally around Mirage after _that_ was one of the hardest things Hound had ever done. He silently blessed standard mission procedure for saving him from dying of embarrassment as they prepared and left the Ark for the three weeks the mission would take.

A week getting in, a week for stakeout and infiltration, a final week travelling to the pickup spot where Jazz’s team would meet them.

Three weeks in almost constant contact with Mirage with this wonderful new impossibility for his processor to torment him with.

_Primus; whatever I did to anger you, I’m sorry!_

At least it wasn’t the first time they’d been assigned together. Hound didn’t even want to think about how he would have managed to act normal now if he didn’t already have centuries of practice to draw on.

Together they left the Ark Base, heading towards the nearest town. Losing themselves in rush hour traffic was almost pleasant. In the middle of a tunnel with many blown-out safety lights Hound engaged his projector, changing their appearance so that two completely different vehicles emerged into the overcast day and turned off towards the distant mountains.

From this point onwards all communications between them would consist of EMF contact, extremely short-range comms and SpecOps hand-signs.

_I won’t have to worry about that stupid slagging code hijacking my vocaliser for a while…_

If Ratchet had gotten his way Hound wouldn’t be out here.

It had been two weeks since engaging in vocal combat with the older Incubator and Hound’s vocaliser _still_ ached.

Two weeks since he’d left the Ark Base with Mirage.

Two more weeks of careful travel and sneaking to get into position for their final push to the hideout.

Two more weeks of realising just how deeply infatuated with Mirage he truly was.

_Slag, they were _right_. I’m _doomed_…_

The good thing about being restricted to nonverbal communication was that it allowed Hound to give his vocaliser the rest it needed after singing Ratchet down. Mirage would have noticed and questioned the hoarseness that lingered even when he was in Cybertronian form. The ache of minor damage was a small aggravation, but on a mission as critical as this Hound couldn’t afford even the tiniest distraction.

Whenever it was Hound’s turn for watch he would shift his vocal unit back to it’s proper form, confident that he would detect Mirage waking up and return his neck to the appropriate shape before the spy noticed that something was different. Autorepair would work more efficiently on the microdamage left by the intense duel when it was fully transformed into place.

And there was a huge, glaring distraction looming over his every moment that was the main reason Ratchet had been so against Hound going on this assignment.

With the coding patches going down without warning and if this happened in the middle of a mission it would compromise the entire thing.

Fortunately, Jazz had created a solid contongency plan.

A dataslug concealed in one of Hound’s redundant thoracic ports that would wipe and replace the patch on his broody code every second recharge cycle. This was well ahead of the shortest time they had logged for Hound’s antivirals to break down the patches and would get him through the mission with no problems.

Observing the target location from afar proved that the patrol timetable Bumblebee uncovered during his reconnaissance was still good.

Both Agents got into position with minimal fuss and set up the scramblers and deflectors around their chosen campsite before the next patrol came within scanning range. Hound wasn’t able to relax from his hair-trigger paranoia to a more normal state of watchful alertness until the patrol passed, confirming that this lot at least hadn’t noticed anything off about his holographic recreation of an empty cave several hundred meters above the rough mountain roadway.

Being restricted to nonverbal communications also meant any chatter the Autobots felt like indulging in was carried out via extremely shortrange comms, meaning that any conversation was essentially limited to the inside of the cave they were hiding in.

::This is incredibly risky:: He said after the vibration of Decepticon engines finally faded out of his ability to detect. ::I can’t believe Prowl signed off on this.::

::I know.:: Mirage looked surprisingly comfortable, perched cross-legged on a dirty boulder. He ran a finger along the edge of his forearm guard, flicked something and produced a slender stiletto dagger out of a nowhere that hadn’t been subspace. ::He deems it worth the risk. If the Decepticons really _are_ building a spacebridge then it changes everything.::

There was a subtle sound of transformation and one of the elegant fins framing Mirage’s face rearranged itself into a set of enhanced optical units. Hound watched, entranced, as Mirage pulled a kit from subspace and began obsessively sharpening and cleaning the already immaculate, razor-sharp dagger.

::I’m not denying that.:: Hound said, breaking himself from his reverie and picking up the conversation again. ::I’m surprised by the sudden change in risk-acceptance. He must be as desperate to see Cybertron again as the rest of us.::

As soon as he said it he winced, remembering the homesickness that plagued his fellow Agent. Mirage caught his flinch and diverted his attention from the dagger for a moment, flicking a smile and pushing _comfort/I forgive/reassurance_ across the light brush of their Fields.

::It would be an invaluable resource to capture, if the rumours are true.:: Mirage balanced the stiletto blade on a finger, optical enhancers clicking and flicking through an arcane series of lenses. ::Even if we are unable to claim it outright, the simple fact of it being there would open to us the opportunity to slip operatives through, in either direction.::

::Information exchange without having to worry about comms being intercepted or decrypted.:: Hound thought aloud, annoyed with himself. ::I should have thought of that.::

::You have had _other_ things to worry about.:: Mirage said instantly, ::Nor is it in your duties and training to think about such things as a matter of necessity.::

That stung. More than Hound expected and far more than he knew the Noble intended it to. The mech was in his Mission Headspace, far deeper than Hound was able to get with his core coding disrupting everything. He bit back the comment he wanted to make, cycling his ventilation systems and deliberately purging the irritation and hurt with a quick and dirty subroutine reserved for moments like this.

The mission came first. Stupid squabbles over irrelevant matters could wait.

Mirage noticed. Of _course_ he would. How could he not when they were a working team crammed into a cave with barely enough floorspace for both of them to lie down at the same time?

::Forgive me, that was-::

::Truth.:: Hound ruthlessly cut the Spy off before he could get any further. ::On both counts. We _are_ trained to different skillsets and specialties.:: Sighing, he leaned back against the cavern wall and offlined his optics so he wouldn’t have to look at Mirage and see the confusion and concern he could feel in the Noble’s Field. ::Leave it, there is nothing to forgive.::

Armour creaked and rustled as Mirage shifted on his rocky seat. The noble’s Field roiled with a complex stew of emotions so strong and clear that Hound could practically hear what the Spy wanted to say.

::I am fully capable of carrying out my part of the mission. If I wasn’t fit for duty there’s no way I would have been allowed off base.:: Onlining his optics, he caught Mirage’s round-pupilled gaze and held it. ::_I will not compromise you_.::

He’d meant to say that he wouldn’t compromise the mission but embarrassment at his own lack of professionalism so far compared to the cool, collected spy had his words running a little ahead of his thoughts. Mirage was staring outright, magnifying lenses drifting slowly to the side, whetstone and blade stilled in his lap as he seemed to piece through every layer of Hound’s defences with optics alone.

Then the corner of Mirage’s lipplates twitched upwards and the moment ended. All tension bled out of the cramped cave as if it had never been. Mirage went back to inspecting, cleaning and honing the veritable armoury of weaponry he had stashed around his frame and in subspace while Hound extended his senses, learning the normal sounds of the forest around them and adjusting his hologram for the changing light as the day drew onwards.

Just before the sun went down they drank their evening rations in easy silence, Hound wrinkling his nasal ridge at the thick, syrupy stuff he was expected to consume. He needed the extra energy in the concentrated field ration to keep up with the demands of his holographic projections, but there was a chalky aftertaste that told him there were other additives not normally included in the supplies for SpecOps.

_Slagging Ratchet._

Mirage made a face at his own cube but drained it without comment. The instant it was gone the Noble rolled himself up in a tarp along the back wall of their cave and dropped into recharge so fast Hound almost couldn’t believe it.

Below them the Decepticon patrols continued like clockwork, the noise and vibration they made giving Hound plenty of time to tweak his projection of an empty cave. Not that any of the Decepticons patrolling the area would randomly decide to transform, leave the road and go for a walk up the hill. Hound was here because Soundwave’s cassettes were known to patrol the area at random and they simply couldn’t afford even the slightest chance of this hideout being detected.

_Insurance policies on top of insurance policies…_

Three days waiting in a cramped hole in the mountain for the window of opportunity Jazz and Prowl had planned to take advantage of.

Just before midnight Mirage woke to trade places with Hound. This had been timed for when the moon wouldn’t be reflecting light back at the planet so the scout could get a few hours of recharge when it would be less dangerous for his holograms to waver or drop.

Less dangerous, but not _safe_. Distinctions like this ruled their lives.

Reinforcing the safeties on his operational subroutines, Hound made sure his holographic defence would hold while he recharged. Locking his Field down as best he could, he pulled his tarp from subspace and tucked himself as close to the back wall as he could while Mirage settled down in the same place Hound had kept watch from.

The last thing Hound saw before powering his optics down was Mirage’s profile outlined against a backdrop of stars.

#### ~V~V~V~

It was strangely comforting to watch over Hound as the mech recharged.

Despite being keyed up for the mission, with every sense he possessed on high alert, something deep in Mirage’s spark uncoiled and relaxed as Hound’s recharge-thick Field reached out to his. Beyond the subtle barrier of his active mission protocols he could feel something shifting within his emotional and relationship protocols, centred on the recharging mech.

For the briefest moment Mirage was tempted to take advantage of the slight distance created by his active mission profile and examine the changes, but training and practicality squashed the temptation before he could seriously consider acting on it.

_There will be plenty of time, afterwards._

The night passed uneventfully, Decepticon patrols passing by with a maximum lag of fifteen minutes behind the predictions they’d made based on rosters Bumblebee had stolen. Unnoticed in their hiding-place, Mirage sneered at the chatter that drifted up the mountain; words carried clearly to his audials by the still night air.

These mechs _clearly_ didn’t take their job seriously enough.

_Especially_ if the rumours about this site proved to be true.

If this mountain range did indeed conceal a Decepticon spacebridge, Mirage would take great pleasure in exposing these idiots for the rank amateurs they were. The minor irritation faded quickly as he settled in, scanning the nighttime mountainside. For an uneventful watch, Mirage found time passed quite quickly as he kept his sensors on alert, shifting visual focus between the slowly moving stars overhead and Hound’s recharging form.

As planned, Mirage woke Hound just before false dawn started to stain the eastern sky. He regretted it immediately as the green mech’s Field immediately smoothed and became opaque, withdrawing to a much shallower level of contact.

After refuelling Mirage ran through his kit again, inspecting his blades for any sign of rust or dulling of the fine edges he’d honed them to just the day before. It was a calming and familiar ritual, one that Hound seemed to enjoy watching when he wasn’t studying their surroundings and making minute adjustments to the holographic projection he was holding over the cave mouth.

Conversation came and went, the silences easier and the words they exchanged somehow more meaningful than they had ever been before despite the incalculable number of times they’d been assigned to the same team over the centuries.

_Perhaps I’m just imagining things, but he seems a little shyer than yesterday._

During the afternoon they both took advantage of the angle of the sun streaming into the cave to bask in the warm radiation, alert despite their comfortable sprawls as the expected Decepticon patrol straggled past below them.

_This lot is almost on time._

For some reason or another, one of the Decepticons was attempting to drag the others into a bawdy song contest. After they passed into the distance and out of Hound’s farthest sensor range Mirage wasn’t terribly surprised when their own silent conversation restarted with an easily predictable question from the other mech.

::Do you sing, Mirage?::

::I was made to learn, as part of my education in the Towers.:: Mirage said, bitterness dulled by active mission protocols still leaking through into his field. ::I achieved the level of proficiency required of me, but never found any joy in performing.:: It was nothing but the truth. ::No matter how a piece is supposed to be phrased I always manage to make it sound like Prowl reading a report on office supplies. I believe the best criticism of my ability was that I sounded as lively as a block of stone.::

The dermal metal around Hound’s optics crinkled. He turned his helm to aim a sly grin at Mirage, his Field nudging playfully at the Noble.

::Now _that_ would be something to hear.:: The green Agent said, optics flashing in the light. ::You delivering an operatic interpretation of the latest supply lists from Stores.:: His smile became downright wicked then, his Field promising mischief. ::Next time we wager on something I _know_ what I’m asking for winning.::

::_Sadist_.:: Mirage shot back, answering Hound’s grin with a subtle one of his own. ::Twisted spawn of Unicron. Why Maggie thinks you’re some sort of Disney Princess I’ll _never_ know. You’re the villain through and through.::

::It’s that nest of rabbits that stayed half-tame and all the birds who think I’m a walking food stash.:: Hound said with a sly wink, armour shifting and flaring for better sun exposure. ::They’re the _perfect_ cover. Little does she know I’m training the birds to crap on Tracks whenever he’s outside in altmode.::

There was something in Hound’s Field that felt a little more solid than the normal fuzz of banter as said that. A cooler, steel thread of truth that caught Mirage’s attention and made the diehard gossip at the heart of any sparked spy sit up and salivate.

::No, seriously?:: He demanded, ignoring the frissions of laughter dancing through Hound’s Field as he sat up and leaned forward avidly. ::There is _no possible way_ you are _actually_ doing that.::

::I am indeed, with the more intelligent species.:: Hound confirmed, feeling very self-satisfied to Mirage’s gently insistent Field pressure. ::With the rest I just make sure to feed them up with something colourful when I know he’s going to be lazy on guard duty.::

Too many instances of Tracks complaining in the washracks popped up with ‘avian excrement’ tags in Mirage’s recent memory for Hound to have been doing anything but telling the truth. His spark surged, not even mission protocols and training able to subdue the emotion that filled the Noble.

::_Hound_, you are no mere villain. You are an Evil Genius Mastermind.:: Mirage didn’t restrain his appreciation, pride and savage glee. ::And as such you need an appropriate theme song in time for the next base-wide costume party. You have a high-quality vocaliser to work with, I believe you’d have the singing voice to pull off something truly wonderful.::

Something odd flickered through Hound’s Field, too fast for Mirage to catch and analyse as the green mech’s expression froze briefly.

::I’ve been told that before,:: Hound said, looking regretful. ::But I don’t sing. I couldn’t carry a tune in a bucket if you welded it to my hands.::

It was another too-smooth, practiced lie that Mirage wasn’t about to call the mech on. Not when he could see the hint of pain behind it.

::You’d have to find me a villain who raps or does spoken-word poetry instead.:: Hound continued, happily oblivious to the fact that Mirage hadn’t fallen for it. ::Maybe you could adapt a Shakespearean monologue?::

Putting his concern at the strange quality of Hound’s responses aside for later, Mirage decided to do precisely what the mech suggested.

_If I can’t find one, I’ll commission something appropriate._

### ~V~V~V~

The infiltration went smoothly.

Not so easily that he would suspect a setup, but Mirage didn’t encounter any unexpected traps on his way in. Extra cameras and sensors had been installed since Bumblebee’s scouting visit, of course. Making a mental not of their placement and ranges, Mirage worked his way carefully through the base, moving ever inwards.

The entire installation had been built with the larger proportions of Decepticon warframes in mind, but many of the rocky, unlined hallways were annoyingly narrow when it came to avoiding physical and EMF contact with the mechs roaming them. Several times Mirage was forced to scale the rough walls and wedge himself up against the ceiling of corridors too narrow for him to avoid brushing against Decepticons as they went about their duties.

Getting into the room that contained his target required some extremely careful timing, but that was why _he_ was here. This was his vocation, what he had spent thousands of years training for once it had been decided that he could better serve his House in this capacity. He was in his element, almost smiling as he slipped into the target room like a sharkticon through oil.

Still, despite his millions of years of experience Mirage froze for an entire second when he saw the distinctive portal in the centre of the large underground chamber.

_A spacebridge._

The rumours were true.

The Decepticons had a spacebridge.

Mission protocols clamped down hard on the landslide of emotions that threatened to overwhelm him. Mirage hadn’t been prepared for this level of reaction, the tantalising nearness of _home_ on the other side of that radiant curtain.

Deliberately, he activated a subroutine that would eliminate all emotional data from his consciousness until his handler gave him the code phrase. Calm descended, available processing power increasing sharply as it was no longer needed to suppress the emotional storm. Mirage carried out the rest of his orders in a state of perfect calm, perceiving the world with a sort of hyperaware clarity that he knew in a distant part of his mind he’d _pay_ for later.

_Assuming I survive that long._

Because _of course_ things couldn’t continue to go this smoothly. As with the human sport of mountain climbing, the most dangerous half of the mission occurred after reaching the objective.

So, predicably, on his way out Mirage ran into a snag.

Five of them, to be precise.

The Combaticons had arrived, unannounced and completely unexpected.

_They’re supposed to be in northern India. What are they doing here?!_

As useful as the information would be, Mirage couldn’t afford to linger. His fuel reserves were running low and there were two hours left in his safe escape window.

Keeping his audials sharp and passive comms tuned to the Decepticon frequencies, he picked up some extremely useful information about the unexpected appearance of the gestalt as he worked his way towards the exit.

And stopped dead in his tracks, glaring invisible daggers at the complication nearest the entry.

Vortex. Rotor blades spread wide as he chatted happily with (inflicted mental damage upon) the mechs on guard duty.

Sneaking past an aerial with a highly developed sense for changes in air currents had _not_ been on the agenda for today.

Silently, Mirage pressed himself back against the wall of the entrance hall and waited for an opportunity. Unhelpful as always, Vortex continued harassing his captive audience for upwards on an hour. Finally, Mirage got the break he was looking for in the form of a handful of groundframes heading out for patrol.

Falling in behind them, Mirage held his ventilation systems to a standstill as he shadowed the group past Vortex. Once outside he continued to stay close, trailing behind them until they reached the rough roadway the Decepticons had cut into the scrub and rock of the mountainside.

Reactivating his ventilation systems as the patrol group transformed, Mirage dragged cool mountain air into his frame, sliding towards the side of the smoothed rock. Being covered in an invisible layer of dust as the Decepticons tore away was a small price to pay for getting away undetected. Ignoring the grit working its way into his joints, Mirage headed away from the base. Walking as quickly and quietly as he could the Noble kept half his sensors trained sharp for Decepticons while the rest searched for a safe place to leave the roadway.

Eventually he found a place where he could it to the place where he could leave the road safely and without leaving signs that even the Decepticons would see. Two minutes of slow, careful movement later he was off the roadway and working his way steadily up the hillside towards their shelter.

If Mirage hadn’t been suppressing his emotions the spy knew he would have breathed a sigh of relief when he stopped for what must have been the twentieth extensive sensor-sweep of his surroundings and detected nothing Cybertronian in origin.

Passing too-familiar boulders and low mounds of tussock bathed in afternoon sunshine, Mirage let himself relax a little as he started across a stretch of open ground –the last obstacle between himself and the safety of rock walls and Hound’s holograms.

Mirage was creeping forwards, carefully avoiding loose scree when a strange, crackling blast-wave rolled across the landscape, washing over Mirage and blowing past the cave where Hound still waited. Dizziness sent the Noble to his knees, tanks rolling and gyros reeling in the wake of what felt like a powerful EMP blast. Visual input went grainy, audial sensors glitching out as he dug his fingers into loose, pebbly substrate.

An urgent warning flared across Mirage’s HUD as his electro-disrupter failed, leaving him exposed on the bare mountainside. His shadow rippled into existence below him, fuzzed with static.

_… **shit**._

Training took over then and Mirage pushed himself to his pedes, cursing with language foul enough to earn reprogramming back in the Towers as he sprinted for the only available cover. Several important peripheral systems followed his mod into shutdown, including audials, EMF sensors and his communications array. If _his_ mod was offline, Hound’s would be as well and Mirage currently had no way of communicating with the Tracker-Scout.

_We’ve become too predictable, that weapon was designed for _us_…_

Scrambling up the slope as fast as he could, Mirage thanked Primus that _this_ time the hideout was made of solid rock and _not_ completely spun from Hound’s holograms. He stifled a cry of triumph as his communications array finally responded to his desperate attempts to reboot it. As soon as it came online Mirage pinged Jazz and Blaster with a specific code –one for a mission gone wrong, requesting immediate extraction and armed reinforcements.

The ground evened out a little near the cave entrance and he started picking up speed with every step, audials helpfully rebooting just in time to relay the sound of rotor blades splitting the air and the rumble of groundbound engines in hot pursuit.

_Vortex. The rest of the Combaticons won’t be far behind him…_

The last of his systems cleared just as Mirage stumbled into the hideout, ready to make a run for the pickup point alongside Hound.

There was a pile of green in the middle of the cave, one that shouldn’t have been there.

_Hound!_

The Tracker-Scout was lying unconscious on the floor; scorch marks around optics and biolights showing he’d suffered far more damage from the EMP weapon than Mirage anticipated. He didn’t respond to comm pings or Mirage’s irrational attempt to shake him awake.

::Jazz; change of plans. Hound is down.:: Mirage commed as worry overwhelmed the emotional shunt to churn thickly through his lines, clashing with the need to escape. ::I repeat: Hound is _down_. Vortex and Combaticons inbound. Request _immediate_ backup.::

The sound of approaching rotor blades was too close now to let him risk more than a cursory scan of Hound to confirm that his fellow Agent was still among the functioning as he tried and failed to haul the green mech further in, where he would be easier to defend.

Giving up on that plan, Mirage pulled his favourite rifle from subspace and took up a defensive position at the mouth of the cave, prepared to defend his fallen companion until reinforcements arrived.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> One day I'll let them be happy.


	12. Eleven: A Difficult Conversation

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In the aftermath of discovering a Decepticon spacebridge, Hound forces his Clan to consider an impossible request.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Discussions of suicidal ideation and mercy killing in the third section of this chapter.
> 
> None of this is as polished as I want it to be but I've been relapsing hard lately so :shrug:

A pitched battle with the Decepticons –including a full Combiner team- was _not_ on the list of Expected Complications when they’d forced Ratchet to clear Hound for this mission.

_He’s gonna slag us _both_ for this._

Hound was a sorry sight to behold. Unconscious, biolights blown out all over his frame and covered with the scorchmarks of electrical discharge and his plating scraped to hell where he’d clearly fallen and had some type of seizure before Mirage reached him. The Tracker-Scout was stable enough for transport but the damage Jazz could see meant there were worse injuries lurking out of sight.

_Shockwave made that EMP, the bastard. Prob’ly hoping to catch me again…_

Their kind were particularly vulnerable to EMP weapons. That those same weapons would also disable mods like Hound and Mirage possessed was just an added bonus to Decepticon Intelligence.

From the looks of things, Jazz figured Hound must have tried to route the worst energy surges from his fritzing holoprojector through his biolighting –taking advantage of a natural adaptation of Syngnathi frames. Either he had already been suffering the effects of the weapon and hadn’t been able to manage it properly or there had simply been _too much_ electricity for his frame to handle.

_Ratchet is gonna tear my arms off, beat me to death with them and bring me back so he can murder me all over again for this._

In the relative safety of Skyfire’s hold, Jazz commandeered a corner for himself and his downed Agent, mentally preparing himself for the worst as Ironhide laid the green mech down and backed away to the other side of the enclosed space. Mirage stood guard between the unconscious mech and the rest of the rescue team, making it _very_ obvious what he was doing.

The Lamborghini Twins slid closer, forming a perimeter with the spy to provide backup in case something went wrong and Hound came up fighting.

_If he’s even in a state to wake up from this outside Medbay…_

Strangely, it was _Mirage_ that had Jazz the most concerned as he settled Hound’s helm carefully in his lap, opening the Incubator’s cranial jack hatch with gentle claws. He hadn’t missed the way his Spy had been watching Hound, hovering around him in a way that made him think of an affectionate cat. Unfortunately, life on Earth was so unpredictable he hadn’t been able to corner his Agent to find out just how much Mirage had guessed about the green mech.

_A problem for later. Focus._

Bracing himself, Jazz extended a high-bandwidth jack from one of his thoracic arrays and slid it into Hound’s cranial access port.

Just before he Jazz plunged into the inner world of firewalls and mindscape, he saw Mirage glancing back at them with concerned yellow optics.

#### ~V~V~V~

Ratchet met the returning Autobots at the landing strip, emergency lights strobing brightly atop his altmode. Scans washed over everyone that descended Skyfire’s ramp, the CMO ordering them to load Hound into his ambulance bay as he began barking his triage orders over comms.

Uninvited, Mirage attached himself to the group of obvious bodyguards surrounding Ratchet, escorting his Mission Partner to medical. He was so intent on his self-appointed task that he was surprised to be shut out of the isolation room. Ratchet was barely half a step ahead of Mirage, rolling into one of the Isolation rooms used for SpecOps. Visible one moment and gone the next as the door slid between them, separating them. Keeping Mirage from his Partner.

_Unacceptable_.

Mirage reached for the lockpad, processor spooling up, gathering and concentrating all available resources to hack the code in the shortest possible time. His fingers brushed the edge of the panel, ready to pry it back.

Then a black hand closed over his shoulder, restraining him.

_Interference_.

Through peripheral optics and certain other sensors Mirage noted the length of golden-yellow forearm the hand was attached to. Calculations ran and decision trees executed faster than thought, faster than anything but the most exquisitely trained and honed instincts of one of Cybertron’s deadliest predators.

Without hesitation or pause his fingers changed course, smooth as silk and absolutely ready to eliminate a potential threat to his downed Mission Partner.

::_Stand down_, Lemures.:: Jazz’s sharp command froze him obediently in place, halting him with a wickedly sharp little knife just tickling Sunstreaker’s neck cables. ::Weapons away. Follow me.::

“My apologies.” Mirage said coolly, tucking the tiny blade away with a flick of his fingers.

Lower down, the heavy dagger that had been about to slide between armour plates and into the golden mech’s main fuel tank followed just a little more slowly.

Holding Sunstreaker’s gaze, Mirage took slow, obviously telegraphed steps backwards until he was standing in his customary following position two paces behind Jazz. The expression on the frontline warrior’s face was complicated, new respect and something else burning in his optics as he stared at Mirage with fingers twitching, dulled and energon-stained battleclaws flexing on thin air.

The sounds of First Aid, Swoop and Wheeljack hard at work treating the injured filtered down the corridor from the main ward. Familiar sounds of controlled pandemonium creating an absurdly normal backdrop to the tension of the otherwise deadly-silent standoff.

Despite his orders Mirage didn’t _entirely_ relax from battle readiness. Not until Jazz forced him into one of the Ops-strengthened isolation rooms and into a corner where he stood obediently at attention. The majority of his priority trees were tied up with Hound and the Tracker-Scout’s status.

Even then it took his Boss the rest of that day and half the night to get Mirage to the point where he would allow First Aid to check him over. In the part of his mind that constantly analysed action and consequence, Mirage knew he would be facing disciplinary action for threatening Sunstreaker. He also knew that this would be softened by the fact that warrior should have known better than to touch an Agent freshly in from the Field –especially one whose partner was injured.

Finally Jazz judged it safe to leave him alone long enough to check on Hound. The instant the door locked behind him Mirage settled on the berth and started hacking every comm signal he could pick up.

To keep himself occupied, to get any news he could about the status of his Mission Partner.

The wellbeing of his beloved friend.

#### ~V~V~V~

Hound awoke to pain.

His frame _burned_, damage reports scrolling across his HUD making little sense as a wave of searing emotional agony surged though him and temporarily stole his ability to think. Two familiar hardline presences stirred, moving delicately through his systems they softened the impact and started working furiously to restore a fragile equilibrium.

_How… What happened?_

::EMP weapon; the blastwave shorted out Mirage’s electrodisruptor and knocked you flat.::

It felt like more than that, something dark and uneasy lurked in the Fields of the mechs he could now feel physically sandwiching him between them.

::The energy that should have gone to your holo-emitter backlashed through your frame.:: Ratchet sounded subdued, even across the hardline connection. ::It piggybacked on the overflow conduits to your biolights and blew out _the entire system_.::

Hound winced, or thought he did. It felt like he’d been dipped in fire and it was close to what had actually happened.

::With nowhere else to go the rest discharged through your neural systems.:: Ratchet continued grimly. ::It melted the auto-script driver Jazz built. The blasted thing’s fused to the port you had it in. We haven’t had the time to build a replacement for the driver or that particular dataport yet.::

The Incubator-Medic hesitated then, his Field rolling with something Hound didn’t like.

::Being artificially suppressed for so long has made your Brooding Code extremely aggressive; as your medic I’m requesting Blurr be transferred from Cybertron and putting you on medical leave in the interim.:: Adamant determination resonated through the Fields of both Hound’s superior officers as Ratchet laid down his verdict. ::Hound, you _can’t_ keep going like this. This rate of escalation is unacceptable; I _won’t_ let you suffer like this.::

There would be no appealing to Jazz on this one, not with the way his Field entwined with Ratchets’ to reinforce the Incubator-medic’s authority.

Ratchet switched to verbal speech now, talking quietly but taking full advantage of Hound’s reaction to the hamonics of his Syngnathi vocaliser to drive his message home.

“You _are_ going on medical leave until Blurr gets here; Optimus and Prowl have already approved the transfer as the Decepticons have figured out how to neutralise both you and Mirage at the same time.” On the opposite side from Ratchet, Hound could feel Jazz’s full-frame twitch when Ratchet said Mirage’s name. “If we can get you stable enough to be left alone for half a shift then you’ll be allowed to return to your quarters. Otherwise you’ll be staying here under observation.”

“Speaking of Mirage…” Jazz started, but Ratchet cut him off.

“Did you know he’s been stalking you?” Ratchet was clearly in full Protective Mode, Field bristling with uncomfortable aggression against Hound’s damaged sensors.

“We’re _friends_, Ratchet. Don’t be an idiot.” Hound shoved his exasperation at the overly-protective Incubator, acutely aware of Jazz’s deliberately neutral Field. “It’s _just_ friendship.”

“I doubt _Mirage_ sees it that way.” Ratchet shifted, propping himself up on an elbow. “Nobody with money in Smokescreen’s books sees it that way, either.”

“Low blow.” Hound muttered, but Ratchet had the bit in his teeth and wasn’t going to give him a chance to get a word in.

By now he figured that Jazz was waiting until it was time to play ‘Good Cop’ to speak up, or else he was letting Ratchet get this out of his systems so he could have a turn without being interrupted.

“Mirage is _always_ near you in social gatherings, he only fuels in the rec room if you’re there.” Even with his optics firmly offline it was easy to imagine Ratchet ticking off the points on his fingers as he went. “Primus; he actually _defended your grooming habits,_ to _Cliffjumper_ of all mechs! He’ll willingly go out in the rain or mud if someone so much as _hints_ that you’re outside…”

“He waits outside medical for you, mech.” Jazz said quietly, a hint of danger in his subglyphs.

If Hound was being honest, it was a _very_ incriminating list.

_It isn’t more than friendship for him. It _can’t_ be._

Opening his optics at last, Hound grimaced as they adjusted to the low lighting level of the secure Isolation Unit. Then he met Ratchet’s outraged gaze as steadily as he could.

“I volunteered to act as a foil to help Mirage get his social quota. He _needs_ people around as much as any other mech but his persona doesn’t let him just hang out with people the same way the rest of ‘Ops can.” Hound explained, cold worry trickling down his backstrut. He _had_ noticed Mirage seeking him out more often since that conversation outside Medbay. “I wasn’t aware that it might have become more than friendship for him. Mirage has extremely limited options for friends, so it makes sense for him to become attached the ones he has.”

Jazz shook his helm, pulling away from Hound and sitting up. His visor was retracted, slitted optics sober as he looked down at the injured Incubator.

“It’s deeper than that already.” Jazz’s glyphs were carefully chosen. “Red’s brought it up with me several times; he’s noticed the stalking and doesn’t trust Mirage’s intentions as far as he can toss that shiny Noble aft.” Battle-scuffed plating flared and clattered as Jazz shook himself. “Mirage gave us a nice little display when we brought you in here. I got a good read on his Field when he tried to hack the door, and again when he nearly gutted Sunstreaker for stopping him. It was more than Partner-Protection drive, something spark-deep. Do you have any idea what he could be after?”

Baffled and uneasy, Hound shook his helm slowly against the padding and pillows so as not to set off his unstable gyros.

“Mirage figured out that the sensor-suite adjustments are a cover story for something else; I gather he’s assumed I have some sort of illness.” Hound felt Ratchet stiffen beside him, saw Jazz’s claws extend and flex on the air. “Now… now I’m not so sure. Something he brought up on the mission…”

As quickly as he could, Hound packaged up the conversation about singing from the stakeout along with several other passably innocuous and potentially incriminating remarks Mirage had made over the last year. He slid the information down the still-connected hardlines to both his clanmates.

The moment Jazz unpacked and replayed the conversation was easy to spot. Hound He had _never_ seen his Boss this disturbed before.

Then Ratchet asked the million-dollar question.

“Do you know what he thinks of **us**?”

Silence followed, nobody had an answer for that.

Hound could almost _feel_ Jazz kicking himself.

“Not definitively. I haven’t been able to bring it up as a serious topic.” Regret was thick in the Master Agent’s glyphs and Field, which Hound countered with reassurance and Incubator harmonics that Jazz still responded to despite everything Shockwave had done to him. “_Slag_ it, I should have manufactured a reason to have that talk with him _centuries_ ago.”

“Yes, you _should_ have.” Ratchet said darkly.

There was an undercurrent to his words that would have had Hound asking questions if he was in the state of mind to do so. As it was, he could barely manage to file the oddity away for later, for if and when he had the energy to pursue it.

Right now he had more important things to worry about.

“If he already suspects me, then bringing it up would make him wonder _why_ and take a closer look at you too, Jazz.” Hound could feel Ratchet’s irritation lapping over him. “And you as well, Doc. Losing either of you two is something the Autobots just can’t afford.”

“They can’t afford to lose _you_ either, slag you! _We_ can’t afford to lose you.” Ratchet snapped, armour bristling and claws skating over the surface of Hound’s armour as his fists clenched against the green Incubator’s forearm. “_Damnit_, Hound.” He begged, pleading with voice and Field. “_Don’t go there_.”

Shifting around so he could see the pain in the other Incubator’s optics, Hound offered a wan smile.

“Sorry Ratch, but one of us has to. May as well be me.” He offered what regret he could, even though it wasn’t much in his current state of mind. Not nearly enough. “Have to plan for the worst-case scenario, then hope to Primus that we never need to use those plans. I’d rather have them, just in case.”

On the other side of him Jazz’s vents hitched, a strange choking noise warning him not to look back. Feeling strangely calm, he held Ratchet’s gaze as the Incubator-Medic’s optics started to shine with tears. His Field was brittle with grief as Hound reached out to embrace it with is own.

“So; if he tries to kill me I won’t stop him.” Hound held up a hand where the other Syngnath could both see it, forestalling the protests he could feel itching in their Fields. “Hold on, let me say this. I won’t try to stop him and I don’t want you to punish him for it, either.”

A long, shuddering sound that could have been a sob of pain or denial filled the room.

“It’s not Mirage’s fault that he thinks like a Noble, and we haven’t exactly had the luxury of time to work on bringing him into the know.” Hound didn’t fight the bitterness that surged though him. “Slag, as far as the rest of SpecOps or the Autobots knows, we’re the monsters they think we are. As for Mirage… if he _does_ take me out it would be a mercy. What’s the human word for it?”

“Euthanasia.” Jazz’s voice was soft, too soft.

The alien word sounded too serene for the air that nearly crackled with all the varied tensions in his found-Clan’s EM Fields, surrounding Hound with a swirling cocktail of anger, despair, denial and desperate pleading that didn’t have a chance of cracking the shell of resignation and acceptance surrounding his Spark.

“Yes, that thing.” Hound couldn’t say the word himself, it would make Ratchet even more determined to fight him on this. “I’m _tired_ of hurting all the time. I’m tired of knowing that every time we get a patch made, the reprieve is only temporary.”

Guilt that wasn’t his own swamped him but Hound offered his understanding and waited it out.

“_Please_, I don’t know how much longer I can keep going, how much longer I can keep doing this over and over.” Offlining his optics, Hound cycled his ventilation systems and braced himself to say something he’d never admitted to either mech before. “I… I’m too much of a coward to do it myself, and I _couldn’t_ ask either of you to do it -I _won’t_. What I _will_ ask is that if Mirage does kill me, _neither of you retaliate_. If you _must_, then I was you to wait until the war is over -one way or the other.”

The room filled with a sound that could only have been an Ovaria muffling a keen of grief. Hound’s optics popped online to see Ratchet’s flaring in an aggressive display, his engine growling a sound of pure rage.

“If you’re going to let him kill you ‘cause you’ve gone soft on him or out of some misplaced infatuation, I swear to Primus, Unicron and everything in between I will _drag_ you from the Well of All Sparks myself and spend the rest of my life making you regret that decision.” The Incubator-Medic snarled.

Shaking his head violently, Hound projected as much denial as he could.

“_No_, it’s not like that. I _do_ like him, Primus help me. But…” Two sets of hands twitched on his plating as he tried to find the right words to continue. “It’s like you said, Ratchet; we _can’t_ keep going like this. _I _can’t keep going like this.” Hound’s ventilation system hitched and stuttered, fans shuddering through and aborted stop cycled as conflicting impulses raced through his frame. “_Please_, I’m tired of fighting and getting nowhere and seeing you both suffer with me. I’ll try to hold on until Blurr gets here, but if this ends with my return to the Allspark, then so be it.”

Ratchet started swearing, cursing Hound in every dialect of every language the Cybertronian species had ever encountered, wrapping reinforced Medic-frame arms around Hound and crushing the green Incubator to his broad chestplates. Behind Hound, Jazz keened a discordant sound of denial as his Field bled. Somehow, Hound freed an arm to grab his Boss, his friend, his closest remaining family and pull him into the hug.

“It’s not gonna come to that, Hound.” Jazz’s vocaliser sounded like it was full of crystal shards. “_I swear it_. You’re one of _mine_.”

The possessiveness and protective protocols that not even Shockwave had been able to remove from the saboteur surrounded all three Syngnath in a cocoon of anger that defied anything in the universe to harm that which Jazz laid claim to.

More love than he could ever hope to put into words filled Hound, strong enough to temporarily overwhelm the effects of insistent core coding. It filled him, overflowed into his Field and washed over his kin.

“By the way, if we’ve all misread Mirage and this isn’t what we think it is…” Hound tried to start, but Jazz overrode him.

“I’m planning for _every_ outcome.” Jazz said forcefully, using subglyphs Hound had never heard before. “_Every single one_.”

Pretending there weren’t tears rolling down his face, Hound tried to smile.

“_Thank you_.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Murderous Mirage, my favourite flavour.


	13. Twelve: The Pros And Cons Of Breathing...

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ratchet pulls out all the stops to keep Hound alive and undetected.  
A stupid miscalculation threatens to destroy everything the tiny Earth-based have been working for.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ...By Fall Out Boy.
> 
> I am far too tired to think of a clever title for this chapter so I went with a meme. I don't think I've ever heard the song, gonna go fix that. Enjoy the angst sandwich.

Whatever combination of shock and medications that was working to keep Hound lucid and calm didn’t last.

It bought Ratchet enough time to triage and treat patients from the unexpected battle against the Constructicons and have a brief rest before returning to work on Hound’s injuries. It took several minor surgeries to fix what he could of the damage done by the EMP weapon, with the anesthetic drugs and programs keeping Hound mellow and dopey.

When it came time to take Hound off medication and let his self-repair systems take over the healing process it soon became clear that the green Incubator was an mental and emotional wreck.

Not only had the coding patches been suppressing the effects of his unhappy core coding, they had been hiding the amount of damage already been done.

Ratchet had already put in his emergency request for Blurr to transfer from Cybertron, but now he had little hope of the Ovaria making it to Earth in time. Red Alert was doing what he could to speed the process, seeming to be almost as desperate to help Hound as the Syngnathi were.

It would have been much, much faster to try seizing the newly-discovered Decepticon spacebridge and getting Hound through, but Ratchet didn’t entirely trust Hound on such an endeavour. He knew that given the state the green Incubator was in there was a _very_ high chance he would do something stupid and self-destructive long before they could get him to Blurr.

_Not his fault. Not _anyone’s_ fault, slag it all._

Because of the way Hound’s base physiology and modified sensor suite interacted, stasis wasn’t an option while he healed. Ratchet compensated with as much medically-enforced recharge as was safe, monitoring the green Incubator constantly. It was so long before Hound was stable enough to be conscious without constant observation that Mirage had gone through his post-mission rehabilitation phase and was back to his normal interactions with the crew before they judged it safe to give Hound even a few minutes alone.

So Ratchet was _extremely_ irritated to find Mirage back in med bay within a week of being officially discharged.

Surprisingly, it was because the Noble had decided to make a thoroughgoing nuisance of himself and _not_ because he needed medical treatment.

_Although if he keeps this up I’ll _give_ him a reason to need medical treatment, slag it!_

Ratchet’s temper was already in shreds after weeks of little to no progress with Hound’s case. His instincts as the lead Incuabtor of their ersatz Clan were freaking out at the situation and his medical coding was tying itself in knots over a patient whose condition he could do little about.

Mirage’s stubborn insistence on visiting the ailing Incubator was the _last_ thing he needed right now.

“_No_.” Ratchet glared at the Noble, wishing he could bodily throw the mech from the room. From the medbay. As far away from his vulnerable Kin as possible. “And that is _final_.”

Having layered every syllable with the subglyphs of his full Rank and authority within the Autobots he expected that to be the end of the conversation.

It wasn’t.

The shift in Mirage’s demeanor was subtle but it was enough to set off every single warning bell in Ratchet’s impressive danger-detection arsenal.

He suddenly regretted turning down Red Alert’s offer to install a panic button in his office.

“No, it is _not_.” Gone was the polite, haughty noble.

Now Ratchet was facing down a coldly angry 2IC of Special Operations. An effective and deadly assassin who stalked forward and braced his hands on Ratchet’s desk where the medic could see them.

_Empty… for now._

“I am aware of the fact that you are running some sort of disinformation campaign about the true nature of whatever is ailing Hound.” Mirage spoke with the crisp sound that Towers Nobility got when they were on the verge of losing their temper, his Field a barely-leashed thing of ice and razor-sharp steel. “I have no interest in the specifics; _for now_. Out of _respect_ for Hound I have resisted the desire to pry into his personal business, and I shall continue to do so if –and _only_ if- you allow me to visit my friend.”

With what Mirage already knew, it wouldn’t take long for the threat of discovery to turn into reality.

_If I was human I’d probably be turning Eppsian Puce right now…_

As it was, the way he froze combined with whatever emotions made it into his Field was more than enough for an Agent of Mirage’s caliber. _Gotcha_.

That elegantly vent-framed helm tilted ever so slightly, an evil smirk twisting delicately sculpted lipplates. His Field pressed forward, cold and invasive, clinging to the medic’s and sending invasive tendrils after the truth of his reactions.

Ratchet was no Ovaria; he was competent at EM Field communication, no more.

Once Mirage had a hold on him there was no escape.

Round-pupilled yellow optics bored into his.

“Is Hound currently lucid whenever he is conscious?”

There was no point in lying.

“…Yes.”

“Is he contagious?”

“…No.”

“Does he pose a physical threat to myself or anyone else in the room with him?”

“_No_.”

There was no question about whether or not the green Incubator posed a threat to Mirage. Even if he did, the Noble was more than capable of avoiding and evading anything Hound tried to do him.

“Then there isn’t anything else to discuss.” Suddenly the Agent vanished, replaced by the polite and slightly distant mask of Towers Nobility that Mirage presented to the world. “I expect to be informed of appropriate visiting hours by midday tomorrow.”

Then Mirage left, gliding from his office as if nothing out of the ordinary had happened, leaving a very disturbed and ruffled Incubator-medic behind him.

It took Ratchet an entire minute to pull himself together and comm Jazz.

#### ~V~V~V~

The nature of the injuries Hounds sustained from the EMP weapon meant stasis was out of the question. He had to stay aware while his self-repair worked on the damage, no matter _how_ long it took.

It had him regularly cursing the Decepticons, because being stuck in the isolation room was slowly driving him crazy.

_Lovely; a whole new kind of crazy to add to the fun_.

It had taken him a solid week of work to get the random emotional outbursts under control. With stasis out of the picture he would have greatly preferred to pass as much time as possible in recharge or losing himself in memories of places he had been. Simply pretend he was _there_ and not _here,_ just existing in that moment until exhaustion pulled him under and he could recharge again.

Jazz and Ratchet wouldn’t allow him to do either of these things.

One of them was always with him, constantly forcing him to engage with them instead of escaping the agony of his current reality.

_Somehow_ Red Alert had managed to discover the truth about what was going on. The cunning mech also got himself added to the ‘Hound Watch’ roster when he noticed the state of exhaustion Jazz and Ratchet had worked themselves into.

Red Alert was surprisingly pleasant company, especially when compared to Hound’s extremely stressed and worried fellow Syngnathi. Red didn’t force Hound to make pointless conversation when he obviously didn’t have the energy to do it. Instead, he plonked a Cybertronian-sized version of a human board game between them, told Hound it was his move and let the chitchat happen as it would.

The game was relatively simple and Red Alert didn’t expect him to fake an interest in gossip or whatever else in an attempt to make the other mech feel less awkward.

I_ have no idea how anyone could make this _not_ awkward._

Such a feat would strain even Mirage’s legendary social graces. At least Hound could delegate the bare minimum processing power needed to the game at hand, using the rest of his processing power to grapple with the punishment from his unsatisfied coding and trying to find a way to exist in the spaces around it.

By midway through the second week of this he was able to function a little better. Enough so that he was able to become thoroughly tired of the same four walls and actually want to _go somewhere_, at least for an hour or so. Any longer than that seemed exhausting.

It took two solid days of pleading, bargaining and unashamedly _whining_ like a bratty sparkling to talk Ratchet into letting him have an unsupervised visit to the thermal springs behind the Ark. Agreeing to a curfew was embarrassing, but having an outside limit set on the excursion made the entire prospect seem less daunting when Hound finally wrapped his mind around leaving the medical wing, leaving this room. So many of his available processing threads were set to the impossible task of enduring the punishment of his Brooding Code that he had very little left over for holding conversations, making decisions.

It was _exhausting_.

It would be so much easier if he could just recharge until they found a solution. His Clan could take their time then, rest and not have to worry about him if he was tucked away in a stasis tube somewhere.

_If wishes were seahorses, or something._

When it was time for his sanctioned excursion Hound put on a good face for Ratchet and dutifully followed the path Red Alert set for him, avoiding the few mechs awake at this hour.

Just seeing the corridors of the Ark made him feel a little better. His ventilation systems cycled more easily, a pressure he hadn’t even noticed lifted away from the ones piled around his spark when his pedes left metal decking and touched the dark igneous rock of the geothermal caverns.

It made the relentless grinding emptiness of unfulfilled brooding code a little easier to bear, helped him shuffle a little faster towards his ultimate goal.

Off the neatly-paved walkways of the closer and more popular pools, away from the artfully carved cubbies that held towels of all sizes, deeper into the cavern system to the biggest and hottest spring-fed pool he could physically access. There were more, but the tunnels to them hadn’t been widened so very few of the Ark’s inhabitants could reach them.

Sometimes it would be nice to be the same size as the minibots.

_Ratchet would kill me for seeing how far I can push the mass-displacement…_

When Hound reached his destination he didn’t stop, walking right into the water until it came up to his chest.

It felt amazing.

Heat soaking deep into his very struts, forcibly relaxing tense cables and layers of stiff pseudo-muscle in his protoform. He sat on a submerged boulder, hot water lapping around his neck cabling and groaned with bliss as the water flowed into every nook and cranny, easing the ache of slowly-healing sensors.

These geothermal springs were just as good for the Autobots as sunbathing in Sol’s radiation, but for a different reason. Hound swore he could _feel_ the nanite layer of his armour absorbing molecules of this and that from the water to repair the protective coating of enamel-analogue.

The temptation to transform rose, tickling his active processes with how _good_ it would feel to soak his true form in the steaming, mineral-heavy water. Hound almost rejected the impulse out of hand as a product of Broody coding forcing him into reckless decisions, but he paused.

It was late in the evening of Earth’s day. Not many were up and about. He was alone, deep in the cavern comples where the Autobots rarely came.

This place _was_ quite hard to reach, more of a walk than most could be bothered with.

On top of that, only Jazz, Ratchet and Red Alert knew he was down here. Jazz and Red Alert would be monitoring any movement in the halls approaching the access to the cavern system in general, watching the entrance to the thermal pool like a pair of hungry hawks.

Right now his chances of being discovered were as low as they could possibly get.

Hound knew that he still wasn’t _entirely_ safe. That accidents could and _did_ happen. But he just couldn’t find the energy to care anymore. Everything he had was going to simply enduring the pain of his punishing coding.

So he transformed.

Dropped his Cybertronian disguise; revealed his true form in a public space for any and all to see.

_I just… don’t care right now._

Steaming water slopped over the sides of Hound’s chosen pool as his mass increased sharply. Cables creaked and groaned as they lengthened, aching deliciously as he stretched and settled in chin-deep, shuttering his optics against the splash of return wavelets. The heat soaked into him, the water embracing a shape he allowed himself to assume far too rarely.

Something bounced back to his audials from the walls of the cavern. Hound stopped humming, only realising the sound was an echo of his voice when the reverberation ceased moments after he stilled his vocaliser.

_It sounds… almost like…_

Cautiously, he began to hum again. The sound that echoed back to him was ever so slightly different to what his audials would immediately recognise as his own voice.

It was almost as if some unknown Syngnath was hidden just out of sight, accompanying Hound in his song.

Despite the ache in his spark, despite the feeling that the crystal chamber protecting his lifeforce was cracking, Hound offlined his optics and gave his vocaliser free reign as he let himself imagine.

The pain, the longing, the isolation; it all poured out of him in song. In Clan-specific harmonics that said more than he ever could with mere words.

In trills and runs and long, low notes that made the surface of his pool dance, uncaring about any possibility of an audience, Hound finally let himself give voice to his misery.

### ~V~V~V~

All in all, bullying Ratchet into allowing him to visit Hound had been fairly pointless. Before the first acceptable time became available Mirage had been assigned off-base for an entire fortnight.

If the order had come from Jazz then he would have suspected collusion, but Optimus had hand-picked the mechs he wanted for this particular delegation and Prowl had signed off on it. So Mirage unfortunately had no obvious reason for complaint.

Although he could still give his Boss and the CMO the ‘hairy eyeball’ if he felt inclined to.

_‘Bee was right. The humans _do_ have some useful and descriptive idioms._

The humans also had some customs that Mirage had decided to explore just for the entertainment factor -because _any_ sort of timely travel across Earth’s oceans was restricted to flight and he had always been bad at recharging while traveling in a nonsentient air vehicle. There was precious little he could do to keep himself occupied while in flight, so he compiled a mailing list of human personnel at the base near the Ark, indexed by how entertaining their reactions to his plan were likely to be.

Given that he already knew several archaic Cybertronian forms of calligraphy, it was only a matter of watching several videos of human styles during the flight and a practice alphabet or two before he was able to inscribe messages from “Granny Mira” in the loopy English script-form their human allies complained about the most.

With the reported vagaries of the human postal system at this time of year there was no telling whether or not they would make it to their recipients before Mirage returned from this ‘Interspecies Relations’ mission. He’d even sent a postcard to Hound as well, spending _far_ too long agonising over which image the Tracker-Scout would like most.

Predictably, Mirage hadn’t been able to resist purchasing a gift for the green mech at the same overpriced tourist-trap shop he’d acquired the postcards from. He spent the entire trip from that point onwards worrying about how best to give Hound this present and wondering whether or not the green mech would like it.

By the time he returned to the Ark, Mirage still hadn’t decided what to do. Heading to the washracks to rinse the grit out of his joints, he pinged Teletraan-1 with a general inquiry about the current status of all on-base mechs. It was late in the evening local time, so there wasn’t anyone to see him freeze momentarily with shock when he found that Hound wasn’t back on duty as he’d expected.

_He is still on medical leave?! But it’s been weeks!_

Running some quick calculations based on past patterns of Hound’s mysterious ailment he should have been released a fortnight ago.

Frowning at the tiled wall of the washracks, Mirage tried to figure how much internal damage could have been done by the shorted holoprojector backlashing through Hound’s systems. The answer he came up with didn’t fit with Hound still being on medical leave. Even if the green Agent’s specialised mod had been so slagged that relying on his frames’ self-repair systems was the only recourse for restoring it to functionality, he didn’t need it for monitor duty, home-territory patrols or any of several dozen other tasks that happened on and around the combined Autobot and Human base.

Shutting down the final rinse and giving himself a good armour-rattling shake, Mirage turned the mystery over in his mind. Pinging Teletraan-1 for Hound’s status and location he almost missed the drying stall door and ran right into the wall.

_Still in Medbay? What?! Surely he should have been released to quarters by now! Medical leave doesn’t mean confinement!_

At this time of night there could be no other reason for Hound to still be in the Medical wing. In one of the _secure isolation rooms_, no less.

Mirage shouldn’t exactly have access to this part of Teletraan’s systems, but he’d been tasked with hacking it one day, and Red Alert had never deleted the login Mirage created for himself during the exercise.

Wondering if something had happened while he was away, Mirage managed to walk himself into the drying stall, close the door and activate the drying systems without further incident.

The gift he’d bought for Hound weighed on his mind as the air roared around him.

When the drying systems shut down Mirage slipped a hand into subspace to reassure himself that the little parcel was still there. He was amusing himself with the logistics of breaking into medical to deliver it without Ratchet noticing when he pinged Hound’s location and almost walked into the door _again_.

Hound’s location ping was moving through the back corridors of the Ark, deep under the volcano. Concern rose, thick and urgent as he remotely tracked Hound’s location, watching as his friend left the Ark and moved into the back corridors.

It wasn’t until Hound’s location ping moved beyond the interior sensor system of the Ark that Mirage was compelled to follow.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> HERE WE GO, HERE WE GO :clap-clap:
> 
> OuO


	14. Thirteen: Hide-and-Seek

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Mirage comes face-to-face with a myth.  
Hound comes face-to-face with his doom.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The artwork for this chapter was created by the digital skills of Pangolin. Obligatory link parade: [Twitter](https://twitter.com/pangolinart/), [Instagram](https://www.instagram.com/pangolinprime/).

Something teased at Mirage’s enhanced audials as he entered the main cavern.

Beautiful, haunting sounds from a vocaliser that could only have come from Cybertron, even if the voice itself didn’t sound Cybertronian in origin.

_That can’t be…_ Hound?!

There was one problem: Mirage had _never_ heard his friend sing before.

In fact, he’d never seen or heard of Hound doing anything more than tap his fingers or pedes in time to a beat in all the long centuries Mirage had known him.

So, despite the extreme familiarity of the timbre the vocalist possessed, despite analytical programs screeching that it was _Hound_ producing this glorious music, Mirage disregarded all input from his internal programs and continued on as if he was in hostile territory. Activating his electro-disruptor without a second thought he drifted out of the main pathway, sticking to the sides of the rough-hewn tunnels and moving slowly.

_But… Hound said he said he can’t sing…_

Something about the thought resonated oddly with memory. Pulling up the relevant file, Mirage paused for a moment as he replayed it, paying closer attention to Hound’s words and the nuances in the subglyphs.

_Warm rock beneath him, shelter of a cave above and behind, distant sound of Decepticon voices singing a vulgar song. Hound’s engine purring close by, distinctive velvety lazy/warm/alert EMF meshed lightly with his, late aftertoon sun pouring over their frames. Complement him, see how he reacts. It’s genuine and relevant to the topic and hand…_

_::I’ve been told that before,:: Hound sounded a little shifty, his expression and Field both genuinely regretful. ::But I don’t sing. I couldn’t carry a tune in a bucket if you welded it to my hands.::_

_Green armour twitching, movement caught and altered to a sun-catching flare. _

_He’s deflecting, I wonder why? What for?_

An approving smile spread across Mirage’s faceplates and he quashed a desire to laugh.

_…That cunning son of a gun. ‘I don’t **sing**’._

Mirage was too impressed by the deflection and distraction to be angry about the half-truth if the mystery vocalist indeed turned out to be Hound. While the song didn’t follow any melody or rhythmic structure he recognised, it clearly had a style and logic of its’ own. Powerful, emotive and beautiful in a way that could have moved the best the Towers could produce to tears of worshipful envy.

Tracking the source of the song back to the singer hidden within the labrynth of caverns was a difficult prospect, but Mirage hadn’t been created to be anything other than the best at what he did.

Slowly, carefully he traced the echoes using the myriad of directional sensors built into the presumably decorative fins framing his helm. Shutting his electro-disruptor off to free up a little more quick-access processing power, Mirage started tracing the song back to it’s source.

Steam swirled around his frame, condensing on cool armour as he bypassed the well-maintained and more often used area of the thermal springs and worked his way deeper into the cavern system. Fresh scrapes on the rockier path underfoot showed that he was heading in the right direction, also that whoever this was had been scuffing their pedes as they walked.

Mirage hadn’t bothered to reengage his electro-disruptor, so when he emerged into a large, mostly untouched cavern that contained one of the largest and hottest spring-fed pools he was completely visible.

As was his reaction, if the mech in the pool had been paying attention.

It _was_ a mech, of that Mirage was certain even with the thick clouds of steam obscuring most details.

Then the air circulation systems kicked on with a low hum and started clearing the buildup.

When the moisture clouding the air thinned enough for him to make out details, Mirage nearly stumbled.

It was Hound, but Hound as he’d never seen the mech before.

What struck Mirage most was the sheer _size_ of the mech. Hound was massive. _Huge_. Mirage tried to calculate the subspaced mass his fellow agent must have been maintaining and failed. The extra mass was distributed evenly, the Noble noted with a critical optic. It suited the sturdy tracker-scout along with the larger chest, altered armour and a pair of graceful horns arcing from his helm that emphasised his understated, almost classical beauty.

Mirage didn’t even need the confirmation of the mech’s optics –still half-closed as he concentrated on his song- to know what he was looking at.

Hound was a Syngnath.

A powerful, fully-grown hunter of Cybertron’s lower levels that featured in the most chilling stories told to newsparks. The monster that lurked behind rumours of bizarre killings and disappearances right through to the abandonment of Cybertron.

_Oh sweet Primus, why did nobody ever bother to mention how _gorgeous_ they can be?!_

Some sound must have escaped him unaware, because the singing stopped. A beloved EM Field thick with unfamiliar resonances rolled over him and Hound’s optics snapped open.

Transfixed, Mirage could only gape like a newframe as he stared into the slit-pupilled optics of the Syngnath.

**~V~V~V~**

#### ~V~V~V~

Hound knew he was only hurting himself furthur by imagining the echoes were someone else, but he couldn’t help himself. Optics offline, he let himself pretend.

Until a strangled gasp from close at hand –far too close- brought everything to a halt.

Bringing his optics online, Hound found himself staring into the shocked optics of one of the most dangerous Cybertronians on Earth.

_So, this is how it ends._

It seemed right somehow that Mirage was the one to find him, to finally discover Hound’s secret.

Steam beaded on on the Noble’s plating, swirling around him as distant fans came on to circulate the air of the caverns. Now that he stared death in the optic Hound finally felt afraid. He didn’t want to die with Mirage hating him. He reached out with his Field, trying to get a read on his fellow Agent, to see if he would have enough time to say what he wanted to.

_Stunned stiff. That’ll work._

Pulling his Field back to just barely brush against that of the other mech, Hound started to speak.

“I figured you’d find out eventually.” He said, watching the satiny blue-and-white plating twitch at the sound of recognisable Cybertronian coming from a Syngnathi vocaliser. “You’re too good not to. I’m sorry I never told you, but you can probably figure out why I didn’t.”

Vents hitching, Hound shut his optics down.

He just couldn’t bear to look at Mirage right then.

“Jazz knows, and I’ve already talked to him about this happening. He’s promised not to do anything to you for killing me; at least until the war’s over. Hopefully he’s cooled off a bit by then.” A deep invent, and Hound braced himself to say the hardest words he’d ever had to say. “All I ask is that out of respect for the friendship we had… please, make it quick.”

Tilting his helm back to expose the cabling of his neck, Hound braced himself for the final blow.

#### ~V~V~V~

Mirage was so thoroughly entranced by the sound of Hound’s voice that he didn’t pay attention to the words he spoke.

It took the Noble a full minute of being confused by the Syngnath’s actions before he realised that he had no idea what Hound had actually _said_. He could feel the tension in the oddly altered Field growing as he scrambled to replay the clip from his recent audio cache.

_What?!_

Unable to believe what he had heard, Mirage replayed the clip a second time.

The words remained unchanged.

Outrage simmered hot within the Noble, concentrated around his sparkchamber.

“Forgive me, but I believe my audio processing must be faulty.” Mirage said, icily polite in an attempt to keep his temper and avoid yelling at a clearly upset and confused Hound. “You cannot _possibly_ have said that you have been _expecting me to murder you_ for so long now that you have _already_ extracted a promise from our Superior Officer to not punish me for such an actß.”

Chin lowering, Hound brought his optics back online to fix Mirage with a shocked stare, mouth hanging open and the slitted pupils of his optics flaring wide as he studied the slender blue spy.

That strange, dense Field of his rippled against Mirage, as if Hound wanted to probe for more context to his words but didn’t quite dare to. A crackling noise that might have been a different model of vocaliser resetting came from the Syngnath as his mouth worked.

“I… y-yes.” The green mech stuttered. “I did. Expect you to kill me when you found out what I am, that is.” Mirage took some vicious satisfaction in seeing that Hound was so thrown off by this situation not playing out the way he had clearly been expecting it to. “A-and I _did_ make Jazz promise n-not to…”

Hound trailed off, evidently sensing the fury building within the Noblemech and unsure of the reaction he would receive if he completed that sentence. His optics dropped to where Mirage’s hands were flexing at his sides, fingers clenching into fists and unclenching over and over as he struggled with the utterly undignified desire to jump on the mech and _slap_ some sense into the mech.

The expression on the Syngnath’s face when he raised those slit-pupilled optics to meet his again snapped the final thread of Mirage's self-control.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Dammit Mirage, stop ogling and start listening!!


	15. Fourteen: A Long-Awaited Confrontation

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Mirage tells Hound a few home truths.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here we go, Mirage's long-awaited reaction...

Jazz wandered the Earth base, looking for Mirage.

Their debriefing for the Interspecies Relations mission the Noble had just returned from was in the morning, but that didn’t matter; Hound was out of medical by himself and it was Jazz’s job to find Mirage and distract him until the vulnerable Incubator had returned to the safety of an Iso room in the heart of Ratchet’s domain.

_It’s a good thing he’s so predictable…_

There were _very_ few places Jazz’s vanishing Agent would go at this point in time.

While the mission team had been working on Autobot public image in a relatively urban area, Mirage would still want to flush the inevitable dust and grit from his frame as soon as he got back. Being the type of planet it was, Earth generated a level of particulate matter that many Cybertronians were simply not designed to handle. Towers Nobility and Flightframes suffered the most. After showering, Jazz figured Mirage would drop in on the rec room to socialise with Bumblebee. The yellow scout was currently on night shifts and spending his ‘days’ off in the social areas to keep an audial on base gossip.

_And he’d know _all_ the juicy little tidbits Mirage missed…_

Using Teletraan to find Mirage would be pure laziness, so Jazz ran a quick logic assessment and started poking his helm into various washracks, investigating them in order of which one he thought Mirage was most likely to have used.

The closest he got to finding the mech was signs of recent use in the second ‘racks he checked -solvent spray flicked onto walls and puddles on the floor.

Then he got a ping from Red Alert.

::What’s up, mech?:: He asked, tapping his lower lip with a claw as he shifted his visor through several different input filters and uncovered no sign of a cloaked Mirage hiding amongst the few late-night stragglers in the main rec room.

::Trouble. Hound has gone to the deep caverns where I have no cameras and Mirage is following him.::

_Slag_.

::I’m on it.:: Jazz said, immediately folding into alt and tearing through the corridors. Red helpfully sent him the best path for avoiding unwanted optics and he followed it gratefully. ::Alert Ratchet.::

::Doing that… _Now_.::

::_JAZZ!_:: Ratchet’s frantic, terrified bellow over their encrypted comm would have surprised many of the Autobots who thought he only had two settings –angry and tired.

::I’m on it.:: Jazz sent grimly, taking the corners dangerously fast for an enclosed space. ::Red, how long?::

::Mirage didn’t start following until Hound had entered the first cavern.:: Red Alert sounded far too calm for the situation; his professionalism coming through as it always did in an emergency, pushing any panic aside for later. ::I didn’t realise his destination or Hound’s location until Mirage entered the deep caverns. He’s been in there for twenty minutes.::

More than enough time to find Hound. And right now Jazz didn’t trust the Incubator not to do something stupid, if Mirage hadn’t already guessed the truth.

_Slag, I should have asked him… but the archive was untouched and then Shockwave nabbed me._

They’d _all_ been distracted then, and at that point there had been no Ops-trained Syngnath he trusted to handle the information Mirage had brought him and follow up with the Noble.

_I fragged up._

Transforming to Cybertronian mode at the end of the hallway that lead to the thermal springs, Jazz took a second to steady himself. Throttling the desire to sprint noisily into the caves, he moved onwards in the fastest silent sneak he was capable of.

_I fragged up _bad_, and it could cost us Hound…_

#### ~V~V~V~

Grinding his denta together, Mirage glared figurative daggers at the upset and confused mech in the thermal spring.

Trusted colleague. Dearest and beloved friend. _Syngnath_.

Hound’s slit-pupilled optics searched his face as he teetered on the edge of an explosion that promised violence.

“You…” Mirage said, voice low and trembling with the rage and disbelief coursing through him. “_You_.”

Resetting his vocaliser didn’t make him any more confident that he would be able to speak steadily, but the naked vulnerability in Hound’s Field combined with the subtle defensive flinch of green armour ripped away any desire he had to maintain a mask of calm.

For the first time in millennia beyond count, Mirage lost his temper.

“I don’t _believe_ you!” He snapped, slashing a hand through the air, cutting cleanly through trailing wisps of steam. “How _could_ you?!”

Thankfully, muted roaring from the huge cavern ventilation fans covered the brief, crackling burst of static that escaped the Noble’s vocaliser.

“You glitched, _delusional_ pile of rejected spare parts! I don’t _believe_ this!” Mirage was shouting now, so utterly incensed he didn’t care about the possibility of discovery. “Did Ratchet replace your processors with a toaster oven while I was away? How _utterly fucking stupid_ can you _possibly_ be to think something like that?!”

Resorting to vulgar English _finally_ seemed to break the strange layer of self-pity lurking in Hound’s Field that had been jangling discordantly against Mirage’s sensors since he’d first come within range. It was enough for Mirage to start putting the breaks on his tirade before his vocaliser got away from like it had many times in his youth.

“No_. No, _Hound I am _not_ going to kill you. You can take that absolutely _moronic_ idea and shove it up your arse, _please and thank you_.” Mirage seethed, uncaring of just how loud he now was. “Primus below, are you as dull as your finish?! You giant mud-caked idiot, I have been _worried_ _sick about you_!”

All throughout his tirade Hound had remained frozen with his mouth hanging open, staring at him. The lost look in his slit-pupilled Syngnathi optics made Mirage want to wrap his arms around the mech and never let go.

“You _unbelievably_ stubborn, pig-headed, self-sacrificing _bastard_. The instant Ratchet lets you out of Medical I’m kicking your dented skidplate from here to _Andromeda_.” Backup cooling systems came online, fans spooling up smoothly in Mirage’s frame to handle the heat generated by constantly overriding battle programming that demanded something to _destroy_. “You are the most _wonderful_ being I have ever had the privilege of knowing. Even though you can be so _dense_ it makes me want to scream.”

No longer caring about repercussions, Mirage metaphorically threw his cards on the table, EMF daring Hound to contradict him.

“_I_ _care about you_, do you understand?” Mirage hissed, his voice steady even though he was shaking almost as badly as Hound by this point. “I thought your sensor suite was malfunctioning! I thought you had some chronic illness that Ratchet was managing. When I returned and you were still in medical I thought… I _thought_…”

Helpfully, Mirage’s vocaliser decided to overheat and shut itself down so he didn’t have to suffer the indignity of having Hound listening to his pathetic attempts to stifle the sobs that threatened to escape.

#### ~V~V~V~

Hound couldn’t believe what he was hearing, what he was seeing.

The calm, eternally poised Noble physically _shaking_ with the force of the emotions whipping through his Field. Resorting to alien cursewords in an attempt to express himself.

It was the very definition of a spectacle -unfortunately, one that Hound wasn’t able to give the appreciation it deserved.

When Mirage first appeared out of the mist he had been prepared to die, and now he was floundering under the twin realisations that not only was Mirage categorically _refusing_ to kill him, there was a very good chance that the Noble returned the feelings he had been trying to hide for so long.

Still struggling to process the events of the last few minutes, Hound only had one question, one word for the blue-and-white spy.

“_Why?_”

For some reason Mirage didn’t seem able to speak. He opened his mouth, then closed it again, lipplates pressed into a thin line.

With all their training, the _look_ he gave Hound was more than eloquent enough.

_Care to elaborate?_

“You seemed surprised when you first saw me like this, but it doesn’t bother you. You don’t _care_.” Hound pleaded for an explanation he could understand. “_Why?_”

Shrugging helplessly, Mirage approached the edge of the pool and folded himself smoothly down to sit in some elegant Towers lounging pose beside the steaming water.

Every motion he made was deliberately telegraphed, executed just a little bit slower than necessary so it would be _absolutely_ clear he wasn’t trying to threaten Hound. Despite every sign of having visited the washracks very recently the Noble even splayed his hands out on the dusty ground where Hound would be able to see well in advance if he went for any of his many concealed weapons.

Then with a loud pop-click, Mirage brought his vocaliser online.

“Before I joined the Autobots I infiltrated some… rather select and secretive Senate Agencies.” Mirage sounded a little hoarse, his expression going distant as he answered.

“All part of the espionage games of the higher Towers, of course. My aim was to access the secure databanks and obtain copies of the research being conducted at certain of their facilities.” Something rippled through his Field that felt like revulsion at a memory. “I believe the Head of my House thought that it would be possible to use the information to bring down one of the highest Houses and for us to gain in the process.”

That was something Hound could understand perfectly well. Some of his earliest missions had involved tracing and tracking similar operations.

“For _anyone_ to get away with experimenting on a Senator as influential and well-known as _Shockwave_…” True fear threaded through Mirage’s Field at that -something Hound could sympathise with. “We knew _which_ Houses were responsible but lacked proof, which was where my talents came in.”

Hound couldn’t help the surge of pride at the extent of Mirage’s skills, even back then.

“While the mission was ultimately successful, nothing ever came of it.” Mirage cocked his helm, giving Hound a sidelong look. “I believe you might be able to guess why.”

“They were Syngnathi, weren’t they.” The Incubator said slowly, the glyphs heavy in his vocaliser as he tried to process the magnitude of what Mirage had done. “Every one of the mechs being experimented on. They were all Syngnath so there was no point in blackmail.”

“Precisely. Who would believe it?” Mirage sighed heavily. “Even if we went ahead and released the information, the cover stories they had for taking the higher-ranked mecha were too solid.”

Shoulders rising and falling in a graceful shrug, Mirage shifted a little on the damp stone.

“So my House sat on the information and watched, and waited, until civil war broke out and the Towers fell. Ultimately, the mission was absolutely pointless.” Something rueful and self-deprecating flickered through the Noble’s Field. “The only use that information served was to convince Jazz to overlook my origins and consider taking on and training up for the full breadth of SpecOps.”

A bitter smile twisted Mirage’s lipplates and Hound’s spark _ached_ with the desire to reach out and comfort the mech.

“What I learned in that place, what I saw…” Mirage trailed off, for once apparently at a loss for words. He stared into space for a moment then shook his helm. “I learned quite quickly that the stories I had heard were false; someone was actively ensuring that they lingered in mechs’ minds, propagating them for reasons I know not.” _Nausea/repulsion_ surged through Mirage’s Field, his expression twisting for a moment. “What they were _doing_ to the mecha they captured was wholly and utterly **_wrong_**.”

The Noble turned fully towards him then, meeting Hound’s optics with a clear and unflinching gaze. His Field nudged Hound’s gently, then unfurled to lay everything bare for the stunned Incubator to read if he chose to do so.

Slowly, with caution written in every line of his frame, Mirage reached out and gently took Hound’s much larger hands in his, supporting the increased weight of Hound’s true frame with ease. Long, blunted claws trailed down the Noble’s slender wrists, but he didn’t seem to mind.

“_The truth is in our Sparks_, Hound.” Mirage said, optics blazing as he caught Hound’s gaze and held it. Every glyph rang with sincerity and conviction as he gave the Incubator’s hands a gentle squeeze to reinforce his words. “There is nothing –absolutely _nothing_\- to differentiate Syngnathi from Cybertronian except for the frame those sparks are housed in. I _could not_ murder you in cold blood, no more than I could anyone else on this base.”

Something flickered in the Noble’s expression, a hint of darkness crackling through his Field.

“Well; if I am to be _totally_ honest with you; Tracks _would_ be the exception.” Mirage admitted in a brief flash of gallows humour. “But that is _entirely_ unrelated to the subject at hand.”

Unexpectedly, Hound found himself almost smiling. It faded quickly.

“Thank you for being so honest with me.” He said, a pang of mixed guilt and pain shooting through his spark. “I don’t deserve it. I haven’t been honest with you, hiding something like this for so long.”

“Do _not_ start on that!” Mirage barked, startling Hound. His Field crackled in a brief reminder of his position as Second-In-Command of Ops, subglyphs sounded scarily like Ratchet had somehow taken over his vocaliser. “You had a _very good reason_ for that. Nobody here besides Jazz knows what I just told you about my past, and even _he_ doesn’t know I looked at the data I stole.”

Just as suddenly as the Stern Commanding Officer mood had come, it vanished again and Mirage’s Field softened.

“Now; I want _all_ the gossipy little details.” That was so typically Mirage that Hound found himself resisting another smile. “Starting with _why_ you were down here sounding so thoroughly miserable. If there is _anything_ I can do to help you that doesn’t involve murdering _you specifically_; best believe that I will do it.”

The subglyphs of Mirage’s last sentence made it _absolutely_ clear that the Noble was perfectly willing to murder anyone and everyone else that Hound cared to suggest.

It was weirdly sparkwarming, in a way that only another of their strange SpecOps clade could understand.

Slender Cybertronian fingers curled around the side of Hound’s palm and squeezed gently. Looking up from under his forhelm crest, Hound met Mirage’s warm yellow optics and was amazed by the sincerity he saw there. His Field whispered against the Incubators’ with a promise of support and protection as solid as the rock beneath their pedes.

With Mirage beside him, Hound found that the overwhelming task he faced suddenly didn’t seem quite so impossible after all.

#### ~V~V~V~

In a shadowed corner of the cavern, well out of Hound’s current EM sensing range, Jazz eased his finger off the trigger of his blaster. Bringing his weapon-arm down took a major effort of will, as did not collapsing with relief.

No matter how badly he wanted to.

Instead, he slumped against the rough-cut wall so it could take some of his weight and let out a long sigh. Not taking his optics off the unlikely pair in the thermal spring, he sent the message he’d never thought he’d send.

::Stand down, everyone.:: Jazz said over the heavily encrypted line. ::Stand down.::

::[care to] Elaborate?:: Ratchet’s ultra-condensed message was immediately followed by reinforcing glyphs from the other two mechs safe enough to be involved in the search.

::It’s… fine.:: His own disbelief was echoed by various sounds and half-glyphs over the encrypted comm. Finding words was hard as his processor had nearly stalled, but he tried. ::They’re… they’re _talking_.::

::Just talking?!:: Ratchet sounded as incredulous as Jazz felt.

::Yeah.:: A few seconds of listening to the conversation and he added, ::Seems like it. Mirage is asking some fairly astute questions ::

::Watch. Keep him safe.:: Ratchet insisted, although Jazz could tell from his glyph choice that Ratchet knew he would anyway and that it was mostly coding forcing the Incubator’s words.

::I will.:: He sent the response with a signal that he was muting the comm to all but emergency pings. ::As much as I can.::

A simple acknowledgement left Jazz perched, awkwardly but securely, in the next best thing to total comm silence as he watched his best Agent and his Kin for any sign that he was needed.

As the minutes ticked past with no sign of violence from either mech, he let himself relax a little.

When the conversation dragged on into a second hour and a certain harmonic crept into Hound’s unaltered voice, Jazz dared to let himself hope.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I had so much fun writing Mirage yelling at Hound. I think that section of dialogue was the first part of this fic I wrote XD


	16. Fifteen: Shaken Down and Shaken Up

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jazz likes his interrogation subjects shaken, not stirred.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Jazz gets very annoyed if you compare him to James Bond. He's no snob, thanks very much. (Thats Mirage's job)

They talked for _hours_.

Mirage was enthralled, hanging on Hound’s every word as he _finally_ got answers to questions that had been gnawing at him for millions of years.

It wasn’t entirely a one-way street. He was grilled just as thoroughly in return once Hound had recovered from the shock of being discovered.

Feeling the Tracker-Scout slowly relax and hearing a purring undertone come into his voice as he spoke warmed Mirage’s spark. Their Fields merged in a way he’d never experienced before

After nearly three hours Hound reluctantly admitted to having a CMO-set time limit on his excursion. He was clearly reluctant to leave the hot spring and return to Ratchet’s realm, but not so reluctant that promises of a visit and image captures of new (to him) fauna couldn’t convince him to move.

_I’ll give him the sculpture tomorrow._

As he rose from the floor Mirage’s processor was running triple-time, furiously sorting new information into rough categories for temporary storage. He nearly stalled when Hound sighed and stood up, his Field rippling. Then he stretched, water sheeting from the unfamiliar and elegant planes of his Syngnathi form. Hound’s newly prominent and heavily armoured thoracic section was all Mirage could focus on, at least until Hound left the pool and _then_ he couldn’t tear his optics away from the long, powerfully built legs that seemed to go on for days.

If Hound noticed, he was polite enough not to say anything.

_I always _was_ a sucker for strong builds and long legs…_

A distinctly grumpy feeling ruffled Hound’s EMF and then he transformed, shrinking into the simple, understated beauty of the Cybertronian frame Mirage had first fallen for. By this time Mirage had regained his composure and they walked back through caverns side-by-side, Fields intertwining shyly.

Aware of the fact that Hound officially wasn’t supposed to have seen anyone during this excursion, Mirage hung back out of range of Red Alert’s cameras and watched as Hound left the soaking area and re-entered the corridors of the downed and buried Ark. The green mech –_Syngnath_\- seemed like he was moving with a little more energy now, his armour had a more content set to it than when Mirage had first seen him in the hot pool.

Just before he reached the corner, Hound glanced back and caught him watching.

A brief smile flickered across his face, then the green mech turned the corner and was gone.

Too busy trying to save the memory of that smile and not swoon, Mirage didn’t notice Jazz until his boss’s Field buried his in an avalanche of ice-cold threat and disapproval.

“I believe you and I need to have a little _chat_.”

#### ~V~V~V~

Jazz was _extremely_ gratified to see Mirage wince and go on the defensive after all the stress the Noble had put him through recently. The fluctuations of his Field were delicious, the fear soothing Jazz’s bruised ego while the weapons that appeared in his hands fed his professional pride at having trained Mirage so well.

Observing the tall, slender mech’s reaction to Hound and seeing the way he moved to place himself directly between Jazz and the direction Hound had gone only confirmed that the Incubator’s infatuation with the mech was reciprocated.

_How did I miss that?!_

“Put the knives away and come with me.” Jazz ordered, every inch the angry Commanding Officer leaving no room for disobedience. “_Now_.”

Slowly, warily, Mirage obeyed. Field withdrawn, he straightened up and slid the nasty pair of vibro-daggers he’d been holding back into the sheaths concealed in his thigh armour. At Jazz’s nod the Noble drew himself up to his full height and walked calmly ahead of him as they left the caverns and headed for the only place Jazz would consider questioning an Agent.

The purpose-built set of rooms attached to his office. Heavily reinforced, soundproofed and as secure as natural and learned paranoia could make it. Jokingly referred to as ‘The Dungeon’ so nobody thought too hard about the real purpose of the facility.

Questioning.

Interrogation.

Torture, too. If it was necessary.

Optimus _hated_ it, but even the humans knew that no matter how Just your Cause, you didn’t win wars by being virtuous.

The rising tension visible in Mirage’s frame and carried on his Field was a balm to the instincts telling Jazz to eliminate this threat to his tiny Clan before Mirage exposed them all. Without hesitation, the Noble entered the tiny interrogation room and stood in the precise centre while Jazz secured the door. He had been given plenty of room to circle the mech if he wanted to do so, to intimidate Mirage and keep him guessing. For a split second he contemplated it, but decided to give the mech a chance.

** _One_ ** _ chance. Because Hound would want me to._

Instead of stalking his prey, Jazz folded his arms across his chest and leaned casually back against the wall.

“So.” Jazz folded his arms and leaned against the wall, looking Mirage up and down the same way he had when they first met. “You’re pretty good at cloning harddrives, aren’t you?”

Mirage tensed, obviously making the connection and just as obviously confused by Jazz’s chosen line of questioning.

“You know what I was, what I did for my House.” Mirage appeared perfectly calm by Jazz _knew_ his Agents. He knew that behind that mask the Noble’s processors would be working overtime, parsing the situation. “I told you I had not accessed the information _on_ _the drive I gave you_. You did not enquire further, nor did you ask about the circumstances by which I came by the information on that particular drive.”

While Mirage seemed to be finished, Jazz wasn’t. He opted for the simplest trick in his arsenal and stayed silent, banking on the fact that Mirage had just spent hours ‘gasbagging’ with Hound and the silence would wear on him even more than usual.

A slight frown visible beneath his visor.

Neutral Field.

Wait for it….

With a little _moue_ of disgust at falling for one of the first manipulation tricks they learned, Mirage cracked.

“I _will_ admit to taking advantage of the disorganisation in the Autobots at the time to make sure I could secure a place.” He said stiffly, glyphs as formal as Jazz had ever heard him speak. “It was the only way I could ensure that you would need my skills badly enough to overlook the the potential liability of my origins long enough for to establish myself as a valuable asset.”

It logical and ruthless, and Jazz would have done the same if he’d been in same position as Mirage. Those had been some of the worst times for the recently-renamed Autobot Special Operations. Just before the war was officially declared, with the command structure in such turmoil that to this day Jazz _still_ wasn’t sure how they’d all survived.

“I take it that you overheard most of our conversation, then?” Mirage asked suddenly, fixing Jazz with an intense stare that seemed to peel back the layers of his Cybertronian disguise to expose the Syngnath hidden underneath. “The promise Hound extracted from you was generous, but ultimately pointless. I have absolutely _no_ intention of harming him or exposing his secret.” The Noble’s Field was a wall of steely determination as he continued, “You may hack me to verify and _ensure_ this, if you wish.”

The subglyphs were _very_ telling; stunning Jazz with the sincerity of this Cybertronian.

Mirage was offering to put his life, his mind and _his_ _autonomy of self_ in Jazz’s hands if that was what it would take for the other mech to trust him. He would allow the saboteur to install Slave or Kill codes if he felt it would be necessary to ensure Hound’s safety.

_Primus, he’s got it _bad_._

“Are you _sure_ about that?” Jazz asked, maintaining optic contact through his visor and moving with predatory grace until he was balanced easily on tiptoes before Mirage.

Raising a hand, he traced the slats of a helm vent with delicate claws, skating them around the dorsal curve of the Noble’s helm and down to where his main neural access port waited beneath a hidden panel. Not once did Mirage flinch, although his ventilation and cooling systems were working harder by the time Jazz tapped the panel with an ungentle claw tip.

It slid aside without hesitation, Mirage perfectly composed except for the tension and determination Jazz could almost _taste_ in his Field as he extended a heavy, high-bandwidth cable from his wrist and slid it home.

Mirage’s defences fell away before him in a cascade of deliberate self-overrides, the Noble willing to let Jazz go anywhere and do anything he wished within his processors. Safely behind his own firewalls, Jazz marvelled at the lengths Mirage was willing to go to in order to defend Hound, silently approving.

Quickly, Jazz accessed Mirage’s memories of joining the Autobots, verifying his intentions and verifying the Noble’s story. He then skimmed through all references to Syngnathi that he could find, resisting the growing desire to shield his Agent from the discomfort of the search.

Because no matter what, the blue-and-white mech was still one of _his_, and Jazz _knew_ what moved and motivated him down to his very Spark. If this wasn’t uncomfortable, if it didn’t hurt at least a little, then Mirage wouldn’t feel like he had truly proved himself.

[It looks like Hound’s faith in you wasn’t misplaced, Lemures.] Jazz said when he was done. [Alright; you pass. I hope you enjoy all the extra work that comes with the higher security clearance you just got.]

“… _What?!_”

Grinning, Jazz disconnected himself from Mirage and stowed his cable.

Taking two steps backward, Jazz dropped his Cybertronian disguise.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just the Epilogue to go.  
I'm not happy with how the last couple of chapters have turned out, but my braingitch is fucking me up really hard and I can't do anything right atm.


	17. Epilogue

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The End, for now.

In retrospect, Mirage knew he probably _should_ have expected Jazz to just unplug from his cranial port and transform.

At the time, he cycled his optics at the grinning minibot that was now half a helm taller than him, muttered something ineloquent about Jazz still being _fucking short_ and gratefully gave in to the emergency shutdown his overstressed processors demanded.

_At least he hasn’t teased me about it _too_ much._

He _did_ regret missing out on what must have been an impressive Ratchet Rant, but waking up to find Hound waiting beside his medberth _definitely_ made up for it.

Being brought up to speed on the Autobot Syngnathi situation meant he _finally_ got answers about what was wrong with Hound –and what was being done about it. With access to Mirage’s Towers-protocol coding to pull form they had managed to create a new series of code patches to get Hound back on his pedes.

Finding out that Prime and Red Alert were the other names on the extremely short list of non-Syngnathi mechs who knew what was going on was a relief. Not only did he get to keep most of his professional pride, but it meant he wasn’t the lone Cybertronian floundering along trying to make sense of a hidden culture he just barely grasped the edges of.

Unfortunately neither Optimus nor Red Alert were able help Mirage with the problem facing him as the turn of year series of human festivities wound to a close and a relationship-oriented holiday loomed on the horizon.

While they had Hound stable, Ratchet and Jazz were figuring out how to rush another Syngnath to Earth, with Prime’s unequivocal blessing on the situation. Someone who had the potential to become a permanent fixture in Hound’s life for several centuries, if not longer. It had been the uncomfortable twist of jealousy in his Spark when he heard of the plan that had clarified things for the Noble.

_I… I want to **claim** him._

Mirage _knew_ he needed to make some sort of move before this new Syngnath arrived. At the very least, Hound deserved to know, he was fairly the green mech liked him as a friend and Mirage wanted to make his feelings clear without

_But… how?_

By Towers and Autobot standards Mirage thought he’d been fairly obvious so far, but there was a larger gap of culture than he had originally assumed. If there was one fringe benefit to all the horrible things Mirage had learned from the data he’d stolen, it gave him a slight edge of knowledge.

_They have their own ways of doing things._

With that in mind, he armed himself with some bribes and went to see the one person who was guaranteed to have answers.

#### ~V~V~V~

Ratchet was about to pour himself some of the smooth highgrade Sideswipe had gifted him when someone pinged a request for entry.

_Is bugging me when I’m off-shift becoming a fad?_

Sighing, he put the stopper back in the bottle and checked the identity of the visitor.

Mirage.

_The slag does _he_ want?!_

Briefly he debated with himself about whether or not he should find out what the mech wanted. Knowing that it was probably about Hound, Ratchet reluctantly putting the highgrade and special ceramic cup back in the cupboard and went to let the Noble in.

“What do you want?” Ratchet demanded the instant the door had closed.

Wordlessly, Mirage produced a bottle and a pair of Earth-produced drinking glasses from somewhere in subspace and poured them both drinks. Offering one to Ratchet, the Noble took a sip of his own to prove that it was safe.

“I would like some advice, and your blessing if such is needed.” Mirage said, his glyphs Towers-formal.

He took the seat Ratchet indicated, crossing his legs elegantly while Ratchet just flopped back into the one he preferred. There was a distinctly approving look on Mirage’s face when Ratchet didn’t so much as spill a drop.

“Oh?” Ratchet asked, silently toasting Mirage and tasting the highgrade. It was good, better than the stuff he’d been planning on enjoying before the noble showed up. “And what would you need advice on that you might also need my blessing for?”

“I have come to care for Hound more deeply than I ever anticipated being able to care for any mech.” Mirage met his gaze soberly, tension visible in the way his fingers tightened around his glass. “I would request instruction on how one would go about making courtship overtures to an Incubator. Also; I require your permission to do so, as I understand that you are the highest-ranked Syngnath in your family group and my code and upbringing demands that I do as such.”

Smirking Ratchet leaned comfortably back in his chair and enjoyed the subtle look of surprise that flickered over Mirage’s face. He knew his Field was incredibly smug and didn’t care, sipping his highgrade and giving Mirage a significant look while he drew the moment out. Eventually he took pity on the nervous Cybertronian, broadcasting approval and watching the blue-and-white plating twitch at the harmonics of his Field and voice as he finally spoke.

“About slagging time.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope you enjoyed this.


End file.
